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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf 3-15 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MESSES. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 

THE RISING FAITH. By Rev. C. A. Bartol, 
D.D. One volume, i6mo. Cloth. Price $2.00. 

Front the Boston Advertiser. 

The book in its drift is a sequel to the " Radical Problems " published last 
year; though it deals less with the mysteries of faith and opinion about which 
thinkers and teachers, earnest and thoughtful like himself, differ widely. . . . With 
a dash of his pen he strikes at forms of belief and worship which to him are nothing, 
or worse than nothing,*but to many millions of the human race have been a savor 
of life unto life, and have opened the way of spiritual illumination, the reality of 
wliich no man living has the right to question. But after all, the reader, whatever 
his religious experience may have been, if he reads to the end, will find the reli- 
gious philosophy of Dr. Bartol resting on the deep and unchangeable foundations 
of faith in God, — the foundation on which all creeds and all systems must be 
built to be eternal. 

From, the Liberal Christian. 

His book may not define the creed of the future, but it does better. It inspires 
us with "the rising faith." What a glorious faith it is! Faith in God, in man, 
in immortality. Faith in reason, in spirit, in character. Faith in the past, in 
the present, in the future. Faith in law, in order, in beneficence. Faith in hu- 
man nature, not as a finaHty, but as "a becoming." Faith in man's environment 
as admirably adapted to develop him into " the stature of a man which is that of 
the angel." Faith in liberty, but not in license. Faith in the pure marriage of 
coequal hearts and minds. Faith in forbearance and self-sacrifice as better than 
divorce-made-easy to solve the social riddle of the time. Faith in educated labor 
as the best solution of the problem of labor. These are a few of the " notes" of 
"The Rising Faith" which Dr. Bartol blends in his wonderful Fantasia. 

Front the Christian Leader. 

It is the faith that Mr. Bartol has attained to as the result of his studies, 
observations, reflections for more than sixty years, following the apostolic direc- 
tion to try all things and hold fast that which is good. And certainly a great part 
of what he with his constant trying has held fast to will be called good by the 
large majority of those who are esteemed right-minded and sound-thinking men. 
. . . But above all things, the writer is true to his own convictions. Tlaese he states 
positively, clearly, unhesitatinglj', but with all gentleness. 

He is certainly a Liberal Thinker, but in sweetness, candor, fair-mindedness, 
love of his fellow-men, patience with their errors and infirmities, shrewd observa- 
tion of their weaknesses, purity and spirituality, he should be taken as an example 
by all the Liberal Thinkers of our day. The book has a long life before it, if for 
nothing else but its literary excellencies. ... It will be cordially welcomed by all 
the best intellects of our day as a valuable contribution to human thought, and be 
the text of many an essay for a long time to come. 



Sold everywhere. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of the price, by the 
Publishers^ 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSRS. EOBEETS BROTHERS' PUBLIOATIONS. 

RADICAL PROBLEMS. By Rev. C. A. Babtol, 
D.D. One volume, 16mo. Cloth. Price $2. 

Contents. — Open Questions; Individualism; Transcendentalism; 
Radicalism; Theism; Naturalism; Materialism; Spiritualism; Faith; 
^j&w] Origin; Correlation; Character; Genius: Father Taylor; £xpe> 
rience; Hope; Ideality. 

From the Liberal Christian. 
What a wonderful, wonderful book is the " Radical Problems." We ar« 
not a third through it yet, and Heaven only knows wliere and how we shall 
find ourselves at the end of the journey. Already are we so shocked, 
Btunned, bewildered, edified, delighted, — in short, thorougnly, thoroughly 
bewitched, — that we have no words to express ourselves. . . . That this 
book has a long life before it who can doubt, or that it will cause a grand 
commotion in the theological world? It will be impetuously attacked and 
vehemently defended, but will survive alike the onslaught of its assailants 
and the intemperate zeal of its defenders ; and will be the fruitful source 
of many a brilliant essay and inspiring discourse and stimulating and 
suggestive club-talk, long, long after its gentle and gifted author has left 
us to receive a most cordial welcome by his brother thinkers in brighter 
spheres. 

From the Commonwealth. 

Spirituality, purity, gentleness, love, child-like simplicity, bless and 
ganctify him; but he is spirited as well as spiritual. In his gentleness 
there is a quick vivacity, and he sometimes exhibits a keen incisiveness 
as of whetted steel. His aim is not so much to solve as to suggest. He is 
no dogmatist, nor is he an expositor or judge. He finds open questions 
and delights to leave them open questions still. Meai>time he looks inf j 
them with the eyes of his inmost soul, discerns much, throws out a p''o- 
fusion of glancing and irradiating suggestions that open the quest' ons 
farther instead of closing them, then retires to look elsewhere. . . . This 
man carries eternal summer in the eyes, and sees beds of violets in snow- 
banks. His own climate is his world, and he can make no excursions out 
of it. A pleasant world it is, with no deserts, jungles, reeking bogs, foul, 
ravening creatures, and poles heaped with ice. As some will see only with 
the physical eye, so he with the spiritual only. 

From the Globe. 

It contains seventeen chapters, honestly representing the individual 
spiritual experience of the author, and at the same time indicating some 
of the intellectual tendencies of the time. It is " radical," not in the usual 
sense of the word, but in its true sense, that of attempting to pierce to the 
roots of things. Many of the opinions and ideas expressed in the book may 
be repudiated by the conservative reader, but its spirit and aim cannot 
fail to charm and invigorate him. Dr. Bartol, indeed, is one of those men 
who have religious genius as well as religious faith. . . . The book is a 
protest against popular theology, made from what the writer considers 
the standpoint of true and pure religion. We have considered it from a 
literary point of view, and, thus considered, its wealth of thought and 
Imaginative illostratiou entitle it to a high rank among the publicatloni 
ef the year. 

Sold evenfwhere. Mailed, postpaid, hy the Publisher*, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. Bostoh. 



PRINCIPLES AND PORTRAITS. 



-J 



PRINCIPLES 



AND 



PORTRAITS 



/ 

By C a. BARTOL, 

AUTHOR OF "radical PROBLEMS" AND " THE RISING FAITH." 




J^ U ^, V '^ <f*« 



BOSTONT: 



ROBERTS BR.OTHERS. 
1880. 



r 



i 






Copyright, 1880, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



University Press : 
John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 






CONTENTS. 



Part I. — PRINCIPLES. 

PAGE 

I. Definition 3 

II. Education 32 

III. Deity 66 

IV. Science 108 

V. Art 134 

VI. Love 157 

VII. Life 178 

VIII. Business 202 

IX. Beasts 228 

X. Politics 263 

XL Play 292 



Part II. — PORTRAITS. 

I. The Personality of Shakspeare . . . 315 

11. Channing, the Preacher 342 

III. Bushnell, the Theologian 366 

IV. The Genius of Weiss 386 

V. Garrison, the Reformer 413 

VI. Hunt, the Artist 435 



PAET I. 
PRINCIPLES. 



PART I. 
PRINCIPLES. 



I. 

DEFINITION. 



IN a scientific age, requiring that ever}' thing shall be 
clearly observed, conceived, and described, it con- 
cerns us not to overlook what no sphere of definition 
can include. Exact discovery, like the projection of a 
map or chart and the figures in a picture, needs its un- 
defined background. The atoms that combine in defi- 
nite proportions, the imponderables of light and heat, 
— which Goethe said change bleak and brown winter 
to the green and blooming landscape, — proceed from 
and refer to somewhat immense. We can define a 
proposition, but not that germinal ocean of life from 
which Agassiz thought come all animal and vegetable 
forms. Definition is limitation within measures of 
weight, space, and time ; but how much cannot be 
put in pound or notched on any scale ! Definition is 
discrimination ; but are we not able to contemplate the 
whole? Yes, if universe be a lawful word. 

We belong to one or another school of philosophy 
according to our tendency to emphasize the unity or 



4 PllINCIPLES. 

diversity of things. Plato, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Hegel, 
care for discrimination, but they aim to trace the uni- 
versal thread on which every bead or boulder is strung. 
Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Locke, Comte, and all the 
modern experimentalists aim to divide and distinguish 
the whole into elements and parts. Neither of these 
intellectual dispositions can dispense with the other. 
If the last be extreme, we have the materialist ; and 
the mj'stic when the first prevails. But the unobser- 
vant fail alike of special information and of communion 
with the One in all. To the ignorant and moon-eyed 
the world is but a bright blur : they dwell in the vague 
and void. To the truculent dissector and exclusive 
analj'st the world is a series of dots or lines under his 
lens or heap of ashes from his retort. The doctrine of 
evolution is an attempt at justice at once to matter and 
mind ; and the evolutionist is an idealist in seeking 
connection and consequence ever3^where. Darwin and 
Spencer — one unfolding the physiological, the other 
the social side of the same theory — are no teachers of 
chance and a mindless origin, but contributors to a 
worship wider than can be held in the church- walls, as 
are those French naturalists who have shown that hu- 
man society only repeats and furthers the economy, 
justice, and orderly government of insects even lower 
down than the ants and the bees. " In my Father's 
house are many mansions ; " and it is sublime to see 
in what huts and chambers of minute cells begins the 
housekeeping which legions of angels in the Master's 
thought c^rry out. It is the prime delight of reverent 
study to trace analogies and variations of one tune 
throughout the vegetable and animal sphere. The 



DEFINITION. 6 

three green needles in one sheaf and five in another 
of two species of pine-tree, the edging of the leaf in 
the red oak and rounding of it in the white oak, — ^as 
though the same scissors took pleasure in varj'ing the 
pattern in a similar cloth, — are parallel on a lower 
plane with the shifting and turning of one melody in a 
S3'mphon3'^f Beethoven, and intended for like satisfac- 
tion. The pismire, hauling a worm ten times as big or 
bit of gravel ten times as heavy as itself to construct and 
provision its sandy tenement, has a strange similarit}^ 
with the hunter taking home his heav}^ game from the 
desert or jungle and the captain dragging a ship with his 
little tug. What a mirror of humanit}^ in the airs of the 
peacock, cunning of the opossum, turtle, and fox, moth- 
erl}' cluck of the hen and proud rooster's strut, cruel hug 
of the bear and saving goodness of the Newfoundland 
and Great St. Bernard dog ! We are implicated with 
the beasts, be we their descendants or not. Likeness 
or difference, the definable and indistinguishable, these 
are the poles of the world ; men and nations are clas- 
sifiable as the}^ incline to one or the other. The Ger- 
man genius, for example, would discover the centre 
all comes from or pivot on which all turns, and the 
French would find and formulate the facts. The vast 
and misty implications of the German tongue tell of 
the Black Forest and mountain mirage ; the French 
language is clear and sunny as their climate and soil. 
It is the dialect of narrative, conversation, description, 
and wit; and it is impossible, when a double entendre 
is not intended, to mistake what a Frenchman means 
to say. The speech he uses may be lied in, but is too 
precise itself to lie ; and Brown-Sequard found English 



6 PRINCIPLES. 

a looser and easier language for a lecture than his ver- 
nacular. The German mind is a quarry ; the French, a 
foundr3\ The French drops its bucket after the truth, 
but does not roil the well ; the German digs deeper, 
that the water ma}^ not fail, or may gush through 
an artesian spring. The questions Where from and 
Where to the Frenchman postpones to that^f Where, 
— getting the most out of the present, while the 
German would decide if there be for us a future or 
not. 

Both scales, finite and infinite, are in every soul ; the 
point to consider is how the balance inclines. The 
philosoph}^ to which only the finite exists shuts out 
God and heaven, and duty save as a calculation of 
profit and loss. We, in its view, are booked for a 
journey, we have taken a berth, we are at an inn, but 
soon to leave for ever carriage and bed and board. The 
relation of sex for a limited term loses in the light of 
utility its charm ; and business becomes a game of 
sharpers, if conscience be but convenience and no 
reckoning exist beyond the ledger in the safe. 

But my thesis is that there is no strict definition pos- 
sible of the meanest thing. A railway sleeper runs 
farther than across the track, — even to the timber, 
tree, acorn, or pine-cone, earth, water, air, sun, and the 
immemorial nebula which has been successively the tomb 
of an old world and cradle of a new one, till imagina- 
tion staggers on the trail. The iron rail dates from the 
bowels of the earth and elements preceding the fiery 
throes which shot up in liquid streams the metallic 
mines and veins. The ant-hill reared over night, which 
the thundering train shakes down in the morning, was 



DEFINITION. 7 

provided for in a balloon of fire-mist bigger than the 
solar system. The ver^^ foot, well shod, which I plant 
on the gravel, is a dance of shifting atoms to and from 
the ends of the earth. There is somewhat transcendent 
in the origin and orbit of ever}- particle, and a conscious 
infinity in the soul they serve. 

" Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,'* 

is a clownish conceit. I and m}" neighbor survey our 
adjoining fields and drive iron bolts for bounds, but we 
cannot measure ourselves. We know not when we be- 
gan. Nobod}" has grown wiser than David, who only 
knew he was " curiously wrought in the lowest parts of 
the earth." The elements flew to clothe in me what 
the}^ did not make. Neither can we tell how much we 
occupy of space. My body is of a certain size, but not 
m}" mind. I am where it is, — in the sk}', primeval 
chaos, or paradise. Its travelling has no chart. It 
concentrates itself through a microscope on a dot a 
thousand times too small for the naked eye, and seizes 
with its speculation a protoplasm a thousandth part of 
the dot, or expands to the size of Sirius the spheres 
which are but ethereal motes. It gathers through a 
hole two-thousandths of an inch wide the light of the 
planet Mars. An attendant at church said, " I took in 
the service with the millionth part of my mind." An 
idea or feeling has indeterminable scope. We never went 
round our own heart, gauged a sentiment, or expended 
it in any ebb or expression of word or deed. What is 
the last time your trained terrier would run for the ball 
you throw? He would run till he dropped. Where 
will your ardor halt? You may make a study of your 



8 PRINCIPLES. 

mate and offspring, as does Mr. Darwin of his infants ; 
but there is in them something j^ou are aware of, but 
can neither observe nor describe. The woman dear to 
3'ou is a piece of flesh, — no doubt belongs to the ani- 
mal kingdom in the order of mammals. She is fitted 
to reproduce and nurse her like. But with her fleshh' 
organism she includes something else, — a personality 
which forbids her being made an instrument or tool. 
She is abused when she is tyrannized over, and dies to 
your thought and heart when she is defined. Still less 
can we define God. Say, boldly, he cannot define, for 
he cannot measure, himself. Religious people are 
startled by the idea that he is not conscious of himself. 
But he were self-measured and finite, not infinite, did 
even any self-consciousness fuUy take his own being in. 
If he be nowise forgetful of himself, he would be devoid 
of the finest virtue which his creatures display. He is 
conscious of and in his offspring and work rather than 
in and of himself; and we are the process of his mind 
as well as fashion of his hands. He is from everlast- 
ing, yet he were blind and dumb and dead but for what 
he does ; and should he rest on a Sabbath day, or 
strike work for a moment, he would commit suicide by 
ceasing from the labor which is his play. He is not 
abstract, but concrete, and rushes for ever into the ac- 
tion which is his only speech. He is good, but never 
stops to think how good he is ; and for his own glory, 
of which the tradition of selfish ages says he is jealous, 
he cares not a jot. It is as pure a fiction when we 
apply arithmetic to him and call him threefold as 
when we speak of a quarter of the world. 

This doctrine of infinity is the ground of liberty, or 



DEFINITION. 9 

unlimited room to put forth our powers. The reason 
a generous soul will not trespass is because it is not re- 
strained. Titian, the Venetian painter, was trained in 
his youth to treat religious subjects onl^', till he was 
pursued by the ascetic spectres he had portra} ed. So 
when Alphonse, Duke of Ferrara, engaged his pencil at 
court, Titian said to him, " You have seen nothing but 
saints and church tableaux from my hand." The wise 
duke referred him at once to themes of his own taste 
and inclination, which led him not to skeleton figures 
and monkish gloom, but to all that is ahve and happy 
in this earthl}" scene. Before long, however, Titian 
himself proposed to paint a Christ. " I thought," said 
the Duke, " such was not the subject you would prefer." 
" True, it was not," answered the master, " when I was 
forced to it ; but since you give me my libert}^ I am 
eager to use it well, and henceforth I promise that 
the churches and convents shall have as much from me 
as the city and palace. I have let ni}' hand run too 
much after my fancj^, and I should be vexed not to re- 
pent." How man}" have had a lifelong disgust, if not 
actual hatred, for the Bible, which the}^ were compelled, 
as a task or penalty, in their childhood to read ! A 
pious kinsman of my own confessed with shame that he 
preferred Shakspeare on this account, and went secretly 
into the barn to read the plays all by himself. Yet the 
Scriptures are poems too. 

But it is objected by many philosophers of mark, that 
no positive idea of the infinite is possible to the human 
mind. I reply, that no such idea of the finite is possi- 
ble. The infinite relation of ever}' thing determines its 
finite constitution. Every thing has an immense auces- 



10 PKINCIPLES. 

try and posterity, and every person is coincident if not 
coextensive with God. We can draw no circle, how- 
ever large, in which any thing can be contained. Every 
thing refers to something else, and immeasurably more, 
as a wave to the sea. Moreover, ever}' thing is eter- 
nally' derived, and the history of a particle would be the 
history of the universe. In what mineral formation, vege- 
table soil, animal frame, or human organism and sub- 
stance prior to all these, who shall tell what part any 
particular atom has played ? What soul or spirit has it 
served, what emissary has it been of the Holy Ghost, 
or what journey taken longer than that of the Wander- 
ing Jew? How it perspires from a pore, exhales in a 
breath, finds room in a sigh with a million of its mates, 
3^et is more solid than iron, tougher than steel, more 
palpable to a finger fine enough than marble or granite, 
more potential than catapult or battery, while with 
such soft impartiality and invincibilit}' it nurses the 
skin of a man or a plant, constitutes the root under- 
ground and leaf on the bough, and is primordial germ 
of all nature's growth ! We cannot catch it, more than, 
as Socrates told his disciples, they could overtake his 
soul ; and what this trowel or chisel of an atom has 3^et 
to do, what prophet shall tell? All that lives will fade, 
but it will hold over and survive. If the world be burnt 
up, this asbestos will remain, — no fire it does not work 
in, or ashes it is not raked from. It is the unmelted, 
safe, and unfailing bond of value, angel of an endless 
errand, and messenger that punctually arrives. Being 
the least we can conceive, it yet has, through the largest 
we can imagine, its scope. In the lightning it is swifter 
than an arrow and heavier than a cannon-ball. In every 



DEFINITION. 11 

form of giant powder fulminates its imperceptible grain. 
It is the force in the frost, whose hoar rime on an au- 
tumn morning turns ever3^ blade of grass to a silver 
spear. It has picked for ages at the Atlantic cliffs, and 
promises to come again. It cracks the granite with 
slight, repeated, unnumbered blows. It drills the hole, 
plants the charge, and blasts the rock with explosions 
too noiseless to hear and too far-reaching to compute. 
It is in the colors of whose rates of diverse velocity only 
a mathematical term is the gauge. With fine penetra- 
tion to paint, it has a strength as vast, too, as the gravi- 
tation that heaves the orbs. Its artist-touch is resistless 
in every dot. What its qualit}' is, no science can define. 
We can appreciate it onl}'^ as we stand with wonder and 
worship at the gates of an inscrutable Presence to which 
it brings, and leaves us to our prayers. 

When this mysterious propert}" becomes a living mo- 
nad in a man, he becomes immortal, and, like Jesus, 
feels commissioned to la}' it down and take it again, 
being conscious of power to rebuild himself from his 
own sepulchre. It is the distinction of ever}' great soul 
to be aware of this survival, and not depend on any ap- 
parition or promise, but say, " I am the rising and the 
life." So David felt he could not be left in the tomb, 
although, as has been maintained, there was no revela- 
tion of future being to the Jews. Mohammed, without 
the Christian camp, and Swedenborg, an aeronaut above 
it, had on this point no doubt. If it be said paradise has 
as much credit with the- vulgar as with the wise, the an- 
swer is, real belief in immortality as an article can arise 
only from consciousness of it as a fact. Many desire 
and perhaps expect continuance of their carnal existence 



12 PRINCIPLES. 

with all its coarse delights. Even churchmen lay on 
the resurrection of the body supreme stress, as the de- 
generate Mohammedans thought of beautiful houris for 
the recompense of the faithful, as for them, in a finer 
than Indian hunting-ground, a sort of heavenl}^ W^Y' 
But the Master's sense of transcending the grave and 
cradle alike, before he lay down in either, was simply 
the extraordinar}^ unfolding in him of the spiritual germ 
necessary to constitute in the divine image our human- 
ity, and it will be awakened in whoever in heaven or 
earth shares the growth into such extraordinary propor- 
tions. For such a personality no definition or measure 
can be found. 

But on the prejudice or presupposition of our origin 
in the elements, so many and small, has been based a 
spurious philosoph}^ of accidental being. We are told, if 
the very same couples had not met through a long pro- 
genital line, or a 3'oung man had not been touched with 
a passing fanc}^ for a young woman, if a chaise had not 
stopped or been overturned, or a ribbon fluttered, or an 
accident almost fatal had not happened to make a roman- 
tic rescue in season, but for some whim or pastime to oc- 
casion an encounter of two persons, it amuses the minute 
philosopher to assure us, we should never have seen the 
light ; no Moses or Solomon or Son of Joseph and Mar}^ 
would ever have been ! What fine sport of speculation 
thus to hang human society on hairs, and make the 
originators and founders of states and churches, the 
revolutionizers of empires and religions, themselves 
the creatures of a trivial accident or ephemeral caprice, 
carrying the fortuity of atoms to higher stages than 
Lucretius unagined, and deriving the moral as well as 



DEFINITION. 13 

material creation from a throw of the dice, a romping 
game, a running from the track or rut in the road ! 
But we should sooner think the mountain-ranges, spinal 
columns of the continental globe, to be pieces of luck, 
than Caesar, Dante, or Shakspeare. Could the bed of 
the sea not have been scooped, or stany firmament not 
reared ? It is less credible that Milton or Job might 
have been passed by ! World or no world, before or 
after Abraham, Jesus knew that God could not dispense 
with or man do without him^ and so he was bold to as- 
sert his own necessity. In the prophet's phrase, space 
and time were a bed too short and narrow for him to 
lie down and stretch himself in. For, when the mind 
opens, its difterence from matter is not onl}^ actual but 
enormous. No life out of deaths is an axiom with the 
scientist. There must be a pre-existing seed or egg. 
The nebula is a star-egg with the star-plan in its amor- 
phous mist, as the acorn holds the plan of the oak. 
From a fine tracery comes animation of plant or man. 
Yet, how inconceivably close together are the living and 
what we call lifeless, the rapid insect generation shows. 
Is there any refuge from the puzzle of these same buck- 
ets, full or empt}' as the}' rise and sink, but that all 
must be alive somehow and that there is no death ? 
/Look at nature with science as a lens. The rock 
swarms, the clod dances, the mineral is but the A^egeta- 
ble stepping down and the animal an ascending plant, 
and the man a beast extended and the angel a devel- 
oped human soul. To make an absolute partition of 
organic and inorganic, and deny an immaterial principle, 
is to have two kinds of eternal matter^ and to have 
naught eternal else. What a lame and impotent con- 



14 PRINCIPLES. 

elusion for the intelleet by which it is made ! But is 
it not a self-contradiction for science to suspend all on 
hap-hazard concurrence, ruling out original intent or 
final cause? It seems, indeed, that we see and hear 
and speak at last ; but all was blind and dumb and dead 
at first ! To common-sense what is this but the bottom 
of the universe dropping out ? Despite the Scripture, 
He that formed the eye and planted the ear, himself 
never heard or saw ! 

Note, too, this confirmation of our thought, that a 
mind that dwells on diversities instead of correspond- 
ences is uninventive. B}^ seeing likeness in difference, 
such men as Newton, Kepler, Oken, Goethe, and 
Swedenborg made their discoveries. The man who in 
public life is taken up with the interests of his village 
or section, and not with the commonweal, will be an 
unpatriotic local politician and greenback demagogue, 
not a true statesman or financier. He will be not a 
Webster or Sumner, but a Calhoun or Ha3'ne. The 
ecclesiastic or theologian, who splits hairs of dogma and 
stickles for peculiarities of form, who rends the Church 
and binds not up its wounds, is a schismatic and heretic, 
undoing the atonement the Master wrought. The con- 
jugal companion, enslaved to his own view and temper- 
ament, keen for a point of dispute, and stoutly and 
stubbornly self-committed to a selfish judgment once 
expressed, builds but that house divided against itself 
which Jesus sa3's must fall. The legal counsellor, who 
has made a microscope of his e^^e to magnify out of all 
proportion the conflict of phrases and facts, will not 
broadly survey his case or truly serve his client, how- 
ever he may worry the plaintiff or defendant on the 



DEFINITION. 15 

other side. Two astute law3'ers settling the exact ter- 
minology of a deed or conve3'ance, and consuming a 
month of time on the mode, while the substanee of the 
propert}^ wastes, and only the fees increase, form a 
spectacle for angels and men. There is an intellectual 
pleasure in discriminating ; but, as different notes in 
music are sweet only for the harmony thej^ combine in 
producing, and are but barren apart, or jangling discords 
together when they fail of that, so, if we miss the con- 
cord and rest onl}' in the oppugnance of our opinions, 
life will be a battle-field of clash and collision, and 
barren as the plain ploughed with cannon-balls. When 
we call a man acute, we give him the property of a 
knife. It is a better gift to heal the breach. 

Let me add that the notion we have of infinite dura- 
tion or extent is inseparable from an idea of infinity in 
the mind b}^ which such notion is entertained. Our soul 
is that circle which has no beginning or end. Herschel 
or Proctor does not pretend to describe or enumerate 
the stars which stretch ofl" be3^ond imagination of mor- 
tal ken ; and as new planets are discovered sailing into 
the port of knowledge, or as a more potent telescope 
reaches other of the stars which we so ignorantlj' and 
incorrectly call fixed, even so gradual and endless is 
our revelation to ourselves. When Mr. Gough lectures 
to the farmers among the White Hills, their surprise is 
in the sensations and conceptions of which they had 
never supposed they were capable, but which arise from 
their unconsciousness into conscious states, as subma- 
rine volcanoes push islands above the surface of the 
deep. No memory or experience can surround the 
mind, and no prophecy equal or antedate our destiny. 



16 PRINCIPLES. 

There are worse than Chinese limitations in any meta- 
phj'sical map of our powers, and how all outward prog- 
ress is but figure of this fact ! Travel had come to an 
end of its fancied possibilities in the old stage-coaches 
over the hilly roads, till the wondrous panorama 
unrolled turnpikes and tunnels, and Menai and St. 
Lawrence River bridges, with pillarless spans, and lo- 
comotives with steel and iron rails. Something like 
a Baltimore clipper to outstrip the Dutch galleon 
and Chinese junk was once the paragon, without a 
dream of Fulton's day, with screws and paddles driven 
by steam, to make the waters bubble and boil. Her 
Majesty's mail was quick enough transit for a letter till 
the lightning bore the message with a different sort of 
post-haste. What shall we say of the phonograph's or 
microphone's record and vocal or instrumental restora- 
tion, or the telephone's transmission of sound ? We have 
not explored our physical situation more than a ship's 
keel has traversed every rood of the sea. But what an 
impiety to confine our thought to the outward utility of 
these earthly developments, when the}- are also such 
hints of a spiritual advance, and cipher-despatches whose 
meaning can be divined onh' in new and loftier aft'ections 
of mankind ! Are not these easements and furtherances 
signs of a goodness for us to copy and carry out? 

Especially we may infer that criticism, or estimate of 
merit or fault in a book, picture, or character, must al- 
ways fall short of the subject, as an inventory of house- 
hold goods will leave out something, at least the house- 
hold gods, especially if what we judge is a personal 
or social growth, as of a youth bursting his clothes. 
We have historians, but no history was ever written. 



DEFINITIOK. 17 

The Bible is as indefinable as the assimilation of food. 
We maj' take exception to its learning or logic or 
moral standard, var3'ing as it does with the ages it rep- 
resents ; but in its divine touches on human souls is 
somewhat escaping every solvent or probe, and so 
wrought into its old texture that no Scripture antholog}^ 
will preserve it or Bible of to-day take its place. The 
Coliseum is precious in the ruins and clambering vines 
that tell its storj', which any architectural restoration 
would miss, and a modern structure on the same spot 
unravel. " A piece is gone from that old English Bos- 
ton church window," said my friend, " but we will put 
nothing in its place." Nature is a qualit}' and quantity 
that cannot be defined, outlined by any draughtsman, or 
seen b}^ Argus with all his eyes. As reasonable crea- 
tures we own functions and processes which reason nei- 
ther accurately notes nor performs. Could Alexander 
have beheld his interior, other worlds for him to conquer 
would have been disclosed. Could Humboldt have seen 
the cosmos as a microcosm of the mind, he would not 
have called himself an insect crawling on the face of the 
earth. It was an uninspired theology that tried to 
sing, — 

" What worthless worms are we ! " 

The planet is our plaything, and smaller than we. As 
explorers try for a northwest passage to a circumpolar 
sea, we seek a shoreless ocean, but have not got out of 
our human straits. We are like an infant slowl}' dis- 
covering its own limbs, for our spiritual members are 
still hidden from our e3'es, while our " glassy essence" 
for ever escapes. We cannot learn too much, and the 



18 PRINCIPLES. 

thirst for knowledge must be slaked, not rebuked ; but 
we ma}'^ be and are too knowing^ and it is a questionable 
compliment New England pays to itself of being the 
brain of the land. This nasal tone of ours, the string- 
music of the head, needs tempering and softening with 
wind-instruments, the flutes of feeling. Let us have 
respect for the concrete and estabUshed, and rel}' less 
on those abstractions which are air-plants without his- 
toric roots. 

Definition itself, I conclude, must be with strict limits 
defined. What is it but a cutting off or dissecting, for 
convenience, of things which are not severed after all? 
We speak of kingdoms in nature ; but is the mineral 
strictl}' one of them, with its flint on the edges of the 
sworded grass, and its gravel the white spheroid of a 
bird's Qgg', its lime in a turtle's shell, cattle's horns, 
beetle's wings, claws and hoofs of animals, bones and 
teeth of men ? Is it mineral when every atom of it is 
pervaded with thought or feeling, moving with will and 
sensitive to pleasure or pain? Therefore not for the 
indefinite, but a quite other thing, the infinite, I plead. 
Covenants and articles have their value, but are not in- 
valuable, any more than is articulate speech. After the 
clatter of tongues in the market or the hall, I find good 
society in m}^ dog. He has the excellence and advan- 
tage of being dumb. He makes observations, but no 
remarks. He is silent, but how attentive ! He under- 
stands from a look or motion, without a word. He does 
not pester me with conceits of wisdom or reproofs of 
my behavior, and is the first of all flesh to forgive my 
sins. He is a piece of nature, and does not try to per- 
ceive how much he weighs or girts. 



DEFINITION. 19 

But the metes and bounds that man sets and per- 
ceives in the outward aspects of things, and from which 
the Romans took their hint for a god of bounds, by 
their contrast with the illimitable the}' offset, give to 
man such a sense of the infinite as no beast can be sup- 
posed to possess. Some feeling of it the bird maj- have 
in its flight, but how far short of the sailor's as he puts 
forth from port, or of the poet's imagination, soaring 
'' from earth to heaven, from heaven to earth," or of 
an}^ person's as he loses himself in reverie or is dis- 
solved in wonder that washes out all care and fever 
from his mind, till he feels like an angel as he comes out 
as from a bath in the actual sea. No human act or ex- 
pression can be rigidl}' defined. Our look, caress, or 
kiss is not the same for a different person, although no 
phj'siolog}' can denote or geometr}' measure the lines 
of change. Love is indefinable. It cannot stand still 
to have its measure taken for anj' garment of words. 
While present it withdraws into the past, projects it- 
self into the future, retires to the closet with God, or 
rises into heaven after angels unseen. It glows in the 
face and hides in the breast. It opens a drawer or 
rifles a grave of what cannot crumble or deca3\ Seeing 
itself in the glass of memory, it is transformed into the 
image of hope, and in this little figure of a mortal ves- 
sel it coasts along the immense. But we have this 
treasure in an earthen vessel which the love is ready to 
cast awa}' for any ideal object, for companion or country, 
God or Christ, on which it is fixed. We feel that our 
love is more and greater than ourselves, even an infinite 
spirit that enters upon our mortality as its lawful estate 
and heritage, and uses us as servants for its own ends ; 



20 PRINCIPLES. 

for he is a stranger to the sentiment who fancies that 
love means his own pleasure instead of another's wel- 
fare and universal good. 

We are related to the infinite in ever}^ way ; and we 
should not question so much and long about the Buddh- 
ist Nirvana, but for its real sense. There is a bliss, not 
indefinite but indefinable, yet clear and vast as a cloud- 
less atmosphere, as we " are laid asleep in body and 
become a living soul." When ordinarj'^ slumber ap- 
proaches, and is just about to touch in their healthy 
fatigue our waking powers ; when, after long listening 
to its holy sound, the last vibrations of the bell in some 
cathedral-tower faint away from the ear, perhaps in a 
foreign land ; when in a quiet hour on the sea- shore the 
waves softly lap the sand, or with just-heard sob and 
melodious murmur leave the crevices of the rock ; when 
the rustle of leaves on the tree dies by as gentle degrees 
as does the wind that had stirred it ; when some expert 
performer, after a touching air, draws out with his bow 
on the string the note so fine we cannot tell, for the 
ghostly echoes, at what time it ceased ; above all, in 
some hour of devoted love or spiritual communion, when 
our cup of content is full to overflowing, and we are, 
like the sun, as calm as we are warm, — then our being 
blends with the divine, we share the blessedness of 
God, and feel secure as he. 

*' Those storms must shake th' Ahnighty's seat 
Which violate the saint's retreat." 

But this ecstasy is a sort of death ; it is dying to one's 
self, to all action or distinct volition ; it is annihilation 
of the separate wiU, a trance of every feeling and fac- 



DEFINITION. 21 

u]ty, — not knowing, like Paul, whether we are in the 
body or out of the bod}^, onlj^ that we are in ''the 
third heaven." As scientists say, the higher up in 
the sk}' the more serene it is, so this is the tranquil 
firmament of the soul. The hour of action will strike, 
but the season of rest is also wholesome and good, 
when 

" Not a wave of trouble rolls 
Across our peaceful breast." 

But our science tends to points of matter, and the demand 
now is to be definite. Define 3'our opinion, position, 
objection ! Exact information is the order of the day. 
So much has been accomplished through the microscope 
and telescope and all other nice instruments of modern 
investigation, that we hope at length to detect God and 
heaven through an object-glass, or resolve them in a' 
crucible. Have we not ascertained the speed of light, 
and diff*erent rates at which its diverse beams travel, 
the number of particles or vibrations in a given space, 
and the protoplasmic tile which is the onl}' substance 
used or using itself to build ' ' this universal frame " ? 
I have to sa}^, what is real in this world is not dis- 
covered so. Dr. Wa3iand wrote with great wisdom on 
the " Limitations of Human Responsibility," but they 
were never found. Who can tell just where the pe- 
numbra of a planet ends? So indeterminate is the 
shadow into which all our ideas go or come. Our af- 
fections alike refuse to have their measure taken or field 
staked out ; if restricted, they are destro3'ed, whether 
it be a divine or human person on which they are fixed. 
If we cannot have unbounded confidence in our com- 



22 PKINCIPLES. 

panions, parents, partners, children, customers, friends, 
we cannot have any. This, shall I say in passing, is 
the sad feature in our social life, that our offspring 
as the}^ grow up so often cease to confide in father 
or mother, and that members of the same family so 
strangel}" withhold the expression of the love for each 
other they feel. What shame or distrust so hinders 
the outlet of nature, and becomes the heart's bane, so 
that young people open their breasts more freely to 
those they are but half acquainted with than to any 
kindred or co-mate under the roof? This imperfect 
sympathy is the chief evil and main suffering in our 
domestic state. But we starve without love, and the 
supply will be sought elsewhere that fails at home. A 
great affection is the true sacramental bread and wine, 
and how much ground it covers who could ever tell? 
But, if it have no boundaries, it has tests. This is the 
criterion, that it seeks its object, but not its own 
pleasure in that object ; it rubs not round it to come 
back ; it interferes not with any other affection or law- 
ful relation more than a bird with an engine over which 
it flies. It never robs one person to pa}' another. It 
enriches every worthy regard, and throws its flood into 
all the channels of feeling, as the Nile or Mississippi 
spreads into wide or manifold mouths. He ma}^ ques- 
tion his devotion to one who is not good to all. If one 
sa3's she cannot visit her mother in her age and infir- 
mity because she is married, and, like the person in the 
parable, cannot come, all love is attainted by the word. 
How reall}" valuable to her husband can be a love so 
pinched? Sentiment is never a cistern that can be 
reckoned, but a stream or spring which it might puz- 



DEFINITION. 23 

zle anj' snrvej'or to gauge. The disciple asked the 
Master how often he should forgive, and the calculation 
was refused. Numberless times, Jesus answered, in his 
poetic form of " seventj' times seven." It has been 
said, error is manifold and truth is one ; but I sa}', 
error or evil is finite and truth or good infinite. No 
devil is God's rival ; and it was in the East a false and 
infantile theolog}' that equalled the Destroj^er with the 
Creator. When Religion leaves its cradle and becomes 
of age, it learns that good afiections alone hold of the 
infinite, and bad dispositions, storm and rage as they 
will, are feeble and doomed to defeat. You maj' de- 
fine 3^our denials and doubts ; but objections to any real 
affirmations proceed commonlj' from weak self-impor- 
tance or a foolish pride and revenge. It is the mis- 
take of our education to make the understanding, which 
is alwa3's a limited faculty, sharp at the expense of that 
whole nature whose artless charms, as it basks in the 
sun of being, are ill exchanged for over-conscious and 
ambitious intellectual gains. Men lose truth in adroit- 
ness, and women ma}' be accomplished and unsexed. 
There is such a thing as going to school too much, and 
excluding from the store-room of the brain what is 
more precious than the Greek or geometrj' put in. 

In religion, moreover, and no less, let us beware of 
sacrificing the infinite to the finite. All the piety is 
not in the Church, more than all the coal and oil in 
Penns3'lvania, gold in California, cotton in Carolina, 
water in the reservoir, or mone3'-value in the mint. 
We must not put doctors of divinity and ecclesiastical 
institutions for nature and histor}', man and God ; for 
God's acre is no burial-ground of past existence, and 



24 PRINCIPLES. 

we can insulate but a few particles of his electricity in 
the glass jar of a creed. Ever}'^ author has his own 
limitations ; why should I escape mine ? Fortunate 
chick that leaves its shell with no broken bit or un- 
absorbed drop on its back ! Not unfortunate, if it can 
chip its way into the sunlit sphere. My friend with 
the incubator leaves such as have not strength for that 
to perish in their stony womb. 

The intuition or apprehension of the infinite limits 
alike the logical and the scientific sphere. The pure 
logician fancies that truth will come out at the end of 
his process like a toy from a turning-lathe. 

Truth is no such product, but a perception identical 
with what is perceived and a creation to those in whom 
the perception does not exist, be it wisdom or beauty 
which the seer may show ; and natural science, which 
professes to deal only with what has a beginning and an 
end, owns only phenomena and the laws under which 
they can be arranged. Only the faculties of sense and 
understanding does it employ, while there are other pow- 
ers of affection, imagination, conscience, and worship as 
deep at least as sense and understanding in the soul, and 
not amenable at their bar, which Infinit}' alone can draw 
or feed. If the scientist confine himself to what begins 
and ends, and the man put himself wholly into the sci- 
entist, he abdicates his manhood and takes his crown 
of divinity off. But the greatest scientists communing 
with a kindred and knowable One in All still wear the 
diadem that sparkles in the light of God's countenance. 
I know a mathematician who has weighed the sun and 
stars without being weighed by them, but whose mind 
remains for the solar system and the whole material 



DEFINITION. 25 

universe an overweight, as it must be whenever the 
soul is in the other side of the scale. 

Therefore, only as a pure abstraction can religion be 
defined. The Christian rehgion, as a life and world 
movement, may be held in our heart-strings and beheld 
in vision, appreciated and obe3'ed, but not intellectu- 
all}' quite understood. Christ was never rejected, only 
misunderstood and mortally slain. Can the sun, air, 
and water-spring, can goodness, gentleness, and truth, 
be rejected ? Christ not only indoctrinated, but with 
his incision inoculated, mankind. Certainly, we exag- 
gerate his individuality when we confound it with the 
infinit}' to which it relates. When, like the wise men, 
feeling nothing is too good for him, we bring the gold, 
frankincense, and myrrh of every rich thought, tender 
and glad or troubled feeling, to his feet, and say. It is all 
yours^ we rob the Being whom alone he came to reveal, 
and whose alone it all is. But his religion is not a 
dogma : it is a growth ; and to reduce it to a set of ar- 
ticles, or arrest it in an}^ old Romish or other sect, is as 
if we should relegate the animal or vegetable realm of 
all beauty and fragrance and vital grace in the garden, 
field, earth, and air, to the huge saurians and the early 
gigantic ferns. He is an automaton in theological 
schemes and an idol when made an end, no better in 
principle than a savage fetich when he is a finality ; but 
in this social line along which as live traditions we are 
handed down, he shot the gulf and made the connection 
between the human and divine. Little threads had 
been passed across the roaring chasm before, but he 
was the cable drawn after. As reason to us, he an- 
swers to reason in us, and so far as Rome withstands 



26 PRINCIPLES. 

reason she does not represent or continue him. A 
French caricaturist represents the priests as burning 
the books and extinguishing the h^mps in an open hall, 
while they crj^ out, "Quick, quick! let us kindle the 
fires and put out the lights," certain shadowy crosses 
rising in the background to hint the light-bearers' fate. 
What responsibility for such perversion lies with the 
Author of our religion ? He is belied b}'^ such as identify 
with any intolerance his mind. Christianity is rooted 
in and grows out of the seed he planted, of which no 
persecution is a blossom, and which is yet no air-plant, 
but runs without a break or fault through or under 
all the monstrous and cruel superstition back to his 
birth. Is it better to humanize than to Christianize? 
This is a catchword question. For is not all, if not hu- 
mane, yet in some sense human, that human creatures 
are and do ? The Turks are men ; yet an English trav- 
eller, observing their atrocities, said, " If a Bulgarian 
could vomit any thing it would be a Turk." Christian- 
ity is in no conclusion but what it tends to become. The 
man Jesus cannot be put back into Mary's babe, and 
Judaea is too small now for Christ's cradle, which he 
can no more return to than the old nebula could re- 
sume the sun. Let ambitious theorizers put their ideas 
into a show-case ; we must have some bread of life to 
eat. Each sect is but a pigeon-hole, from pale Radi- 
calism to scarlet Rome ; but true religion, according 
to the old Greek phrase, is an everlasting flow. Jesus 
was but a germ ; and what a borrower from heaven 
and earth is every germ that succeeds. 

But Christianity is no denial of libert}", rather its se- 
curity and pledge. How man}^ a soul it has released 



DEFINITIOISr. 27 

to rush into action and receive good ! In Fanst's cham- 
ber one corner of the m3'stic triangle had to be loosened 
to let the evil spirit out ; this same religion makes a 
road for the good one in. Freedom we want and ask. 
We breathe the atmosphere and tread the globe. Nests 
of birds and lairs of beasts are open to the da3^ Everj'' 
thing pines in a cage. The sea-lion taken from his 
Pacific swimming-school and carried round in a show- 
man's tank snorts out his wrath and disgust ; and we 
find onl}' a prison in the largest domain of fact and rule. 
When the scientist can reckon how far a musical vibra- 
tion may reach, he may tiy to render this other thrill of 
countless chords in the human heart. God goes when 
we fill the space with ph3'sical laws. Make out 3'our 
list of things not to praj' for, — health, rain, the dead, or 
a better temper in 3'ourself, — and when 3'ou have fin- 
ished j^our catalogue 3'ou will cease to pra3\ A 3'oung 
girl was sick as unto death, and there was no virtue in 
medicine for her case ; but all the rest of the house gath- 
ered around her in soft watch day and night, fed her from 
their life, with the cords in their bosoms held her to her 
moorings, and pra3'ed back her flitting ghost ; and I 
said to the mother, " But for such devotion 3'our child 
would have died." She answered, " It is so ! " I met nw 
neighbor moping about his ailing horse, which he said 
he must lose. I said, "Do not let him know 3^our 
opinion ; it will kill him if you do : cany not 3'our 
wretched face into the barn, but speak cheerfull3" to 
him ; pat him, tell him he has a good chance, be trust- 
ful and he will get well," as he did ; for the tame and 
wild creatures partake our feeling and share in the dif- 
fusion of knowledge. The cat understands whom to 



28 PRINCIPLES. 

trust, the old rat shuns the trap, the bird or squirrel 
measures a different distance from different persons 
according to its confidence or fear. A like sentiment to 
what is above us is our support ; and is there not for a 
man in the catalogue a place as much as for a butterfly 
or a bug? What are his characteristics and evident 
notes? Not only to argue or observe, but to hope and 
wonder and love and pray. The flash in the eagle's 
e3''e, the color on the flamingo's wing, is not left out in 
the list of their traits ; wh}^ omit those of my prop- 
erties, affections, and aspirations, which are the best 
arguments of my origin and end? Please, O naturalist, 
in your collection put me down ! The text is venerable, 
the tradition noble, and the resurrection somehow took 
place ! Yet I believe in my soul not because of the 
book ; I believe in the book because of my soul. Books 
and institutions may be riddled with criticism, but there 
is a mark in me no arrow can reach. A simply ritual 
or biblical religion with an ever-growing number of 
persons can no longer meet the case ; yet despise not 
the oflfice it has done. How much service has been per- 
formed b}' that cast-away, wrenched, and rusty railway- 
coupling which no one deigns to pick up ! Some spirit- 
ual bond we must have ; but scorn not the ancient while 
you fashion the new ! May the fresh chain draw as 
much treasure, and more, over rumbling bridges, along 
gloomy defiles and the edge of precipices of peril, into 
places of safety and peace ! A reasonable radicalism is 
always in order, as a strikem^y sometimes be in place. 
But healthy division and subdivision are for reunion. 
Not logic, but love, made the world, and language was 
invented both to distinguish and unite. Lord Bacon 



DEFINITION. 29 

sa3's diy light is the best ; but the natural beam is yel- 
low in the sun, blue in the sk}', gra}' or azure in the 
sea, hazy in the horizon or on the hills, a Joseph's coat 
in the rainbow, and a chameleon in the clouds ; and 
truth is not pure white, but man}'- tinted, and like a 
changeable silk or gem. Those who veiled their polit- 
ical designs were once called obscurantists; and there 
are religious folk of that kind. But there is an honest 
clear-obscure in nature, in art, and in the human breast. 
There is a charm in the darkling as in the transparent 
stream. 

Understanding alone cannot suffice. Pure intellect is 
the past, instinct is the present tense. Intelligence is 
a store, not the first perceiving power ; and new appre- 
hension must keep knowledge alive, else it becomes a 
bank whose circulation has ceased. Abstract reason 
must be fed b}' other faculties, otherwise, as an arm}" 
without forage, it starves. Sap the ground of instinct 
with sceptical doubt, and 3'ou endanger the superstruc- 
ture of faith, as the ga}" cit}' of Paris is undermined 
with quaiTies read}' at an earthquake to 3'awn. All our 
theories are held in check b}' the never quite compre- 
hended facts, — the fish breathing water, the bird swim- 
ming in air, the toad's heart beating in the rock, the 
human frame resisting polar cold b}' laws we imperfectly 
trace but can nowise comprehend. All statistics are 
defied by the simplest act. A look, caress, kiss, for a 
diff'erent person is not the same thing ; and in every 
thing life alone can instruct. It has been said we must 
learn science of the scientist, art of the artist, and the- 
olog}' of the theologian. But we shut the door of im- 
provement and belittle ever}' branch of knowledge when 



30 PEINCirLES. 

we confine it to itself. As well give the cubic contents 
of Burrampooter or the Nile as of the river of the hum- 
blest life. We cannot dissect ourselves. How ghostly 
we are to each other, and what a phantom slipping from 
us is the world ! The freedom we must affirm on our 
passage through time is for all. Pope Pius pretended 
that Italian independence made him a prisoner at Rome. 
It is a proper confinement if the common libertj^ puts 
an individual in jail ! What is sacred is not peculiar 
to any one person or place. Your bottle of water for 
a baptism from the Jordan has contracted a soil and 
stain ; the neighboring brook is more clean. The pres- 
ent soul alone is great ; all its sin or sorrow is super- 
ficial as a flesh-wound. From the adobe-house it now 
occupies it looks out to the firmament's fiery wheels. 
It heals itself of all injury from whatever hostile or 
friendly hand, as the wounded whale, plunging away, 
cools in the broad Atlantic its bleeding flanks. Faith is 
latent if not professed. As a creature's horn does not 
bud to be blasted, so the horn of our hope shall be ex- 
alted with honor. " Some faces," sa^^s Goethe, " have 
but a date ; others a history." Let me add, there is a 
prophetic countenance. Men are low, but on an as- 
cending grade that goes out of sight. Once the now 
human being ma}^ have been a howling beast. After- 
wards, " Thus saith the Lord" issues from his lips. At 
last he absolves his brother and himself. Pope or papa 
is the Real Presence in an}^ soul. 

Let us not lose or oppose discrimination. Things are 
discrete, and must neither be divided nor confused, but 
properly distinguished as they branch from their hidden 
and indescribable root. Adam gave names, and the 



DEFINITION. 31 

nominalist has with the reaUst still a place ; nor has 
the time come for Christian and other denominational 
titles to be dropped. Without nomenclature, poorly as 
its office is done, we should not know where we are in 
belief, philosophy, or life. Give to the anti-Christian, 
it has been said, a Christian position in pulpit and 
church, as on the same subject he only takes a different 
point of view. In the fire on Fort Sumter the seces- 
sionists took a different point of view with their guns, 
but were not invited to trail them within the manned 
and defended walls. Religious faith has become super- 
ficial when we can unship it from our minds as a tem- 
porary affair or ^olian attachment, and kick it like a 
footstool awa}' to carry on theological discussions by 
which its virtue and value are even for a moment dis- 
allowed. A great genius like Spinoza, solving Hebrew 
and Christian ideas in some vast generalization, should 
have welcome among all thoughtful men ; but to an 
antagonist of our religion as such, wh}' should the rib- 
bon and cross of moral or intellectual honor, as in a 
hol}^ war, be assigned? When liberality becomes lib- 
eralism, and liberty libertinism, and all questions are 
open, conviction has deceased, and the time has come, 
in the fundamental and fatal indifference, for euthanasia 
or the Japanese official suicide and happ}' despatch. 
That season in this world arrives timeh', sooner or later, 
to nations and denominations that have had each a 
worth}' mission, as it does for suns to set and for the 
morning star, that saluted earl}' risers or guided belated 
wanderers, to fade in the blazing day. 



32 PRINCIPLES. 



n. 

EDUCATION. 

*' T TE has splendid talents; what a pity he had 
-■- -L not been educated ! " said Taylor, the Bethel 
preacher, of Channing, the famous divine. The strong 
and supple man of the street and the sea, who could 
row and reef and steer and order, and meet men, from 
the sailor to the president or king, on their own terms ; 
head of the table in all companies ; graduate of the uni- 
versity of the world ; his fluent bodj^ a piece of music ; 
his manners a flattery of mankind, as he touched with 
Oriental courtesy his head, his heart, and his lips at once, 
and even out of his wife's funeral carriage greeted every 
acquaintance with a shining face ; the cosmopolite, yet 
idolater of Boston, knowing and known of all, that never 
had an unhappy day in his life ; this child of Boreas and 
the north star, who, like the ship he loved, had taken his 
shape from every wind and wave in the world, yet had 
an unquenchable supernatural light in the cabin of his 
brain and ever-heaving love, as of a thousand horse- 
power, in his beating heart, — this man found something 
stiff" and angular in his great scholastic contemporary, 
a certain planetary distance hard to overcome, an un- 
smiling solemnity, and a fearful foil to his own plaj'ful 
humor and perpetual wit. How partially educated, with 
all our degrees^ most of us are ! Not one in a million 



EDUCATIOK. 33 

has ninety degrees every way, like the sphere. Mj 
friend mourns over her dog, a handsome coUie, that by 
reason of a neglected education he remains so un- 
trained. When he could be taught to mind, she saj's, 
at a word or wink, to fetch and carry, follow or stay 
at home, bark at pedlers, watch the wagon, open his 
e3'e and the flap of his ear at every sound in the night, 
and to distance every burglar and offensive beast with 
his growl, he can in fact onl}' give his paw, whine 
and drop his tail when he is sony, or leap up into her 
face with untimely" and excessive show of his love. But 
how many children, not to say men and women, are as 
undeveloped as this puppy of a year old ! We have our 
town school, our academy, and college ; and the reading, 
writing, and ciphering, and languages withal, in the 
preparator}' course for Harvard or Yale. The four- 
3'ears' curriculum, porch and entry of a profession, 
supposes a perfect unfolding of some sort. But who is 
an educated person ? A liberal education must go be- 
•j^ond an}' specialty of Latin, Greek, mathematics, phys- 
ics, metaph3'sics, or of expertness in medicine, divinit}', 
or law, which is scarce better than an apprenticeship to 
a trade ; and it must draw out all the faculties, so that 
the man, after his minority, shall take possession of his 
estate with a cultivation that tries its resources. An 
educated person adds grace to knowledge. He never 
interrupts, or cuts another's sentence in two, never 
storms, swears, laughs obstreperousl}' or makes a noise. 
"He shall not strive or cr}', neither shall any man 
hear his voice in the streets." Turner was a great 
painter ; but if he was coarse in his habits or gruff to 
strangers, so far, despite his canvas, he was a brute 

3 



34 PRINCIPLES. 

and a boor. If Goethe touched his hat to the civil 
power, and Beethoven, like a Quaker, nailed his to his 
head, the poet evinced more culture than the musician. 
We ma}^ be revolutionary, but we must not be rude. 
We speak of an educated face and voice. What un- 
redeemed wastes and deserts in some countenances ! 
What dissonance as of savage tom-toms and monotony 
as of Chinese gongs in much human speech ! Form, 
posture, and gesture are so many witnesses or detec- 
tives to demonstrate a full and round instruction, or 
disproportion and deformit}^ worse than of statue or 
building. Webster was a matchless advocate, but the 
Fugitive Slave Law discovered a hole in his head. 

But what are the powers whose appearance in the 
frame we thus hint? Chief or only, as some construe, 
are the senses and understanding, purve^'ors of fact and 
arrangers of phenomena under laws. This is a simple 
and superficial process, which makes the universe a 
row of pins or so many hills in a potato-field. Animals 
can count ; and the learned goat in Victor Hugo's 
" Notre Dame " spells out " Phoebus," the name of Es- 
meralda's hero, sorting the letters with his hoof. But 
has not Science a right to the van, with the crowd of her 
triumphs in these modern times, tracing the one organic 
thread on which worm and man are strung, hunting up 
in all things our relations, establishing the derivation of 
every earthly mine and quarry from the sun b}" observa- 
tion of the metals in his beams ? Admirable industry 
and success ; pertaining, however, to structure and 
surface alone. But are not these investigations deep, 
while other pursuits and abilities are comparatively 
shallow and on the outside ? I answer, as materialists 



EDUCATION. 35 

we are on the outside, for matter has no inside. That 
is its definition. The ab3ss, the core of tlie planet, 
is as external as the top of the ground. A thought 
or feeling ma}' have depth, but an atom or a con- 
stellation has not. Not space or ether is fathomless, 
but the soul. God inhabits not, but includes the sk}' ; 
and that is not a man who carries not the heaven he 
goes to in his heart. " In this place is one greater 
than the temple," said Jesus ; marble temple at Jeru- 
salem, or the one not made with hands, mattered not. 
" Out of the depths have I cried unto thee," sang 
David ; but he meant no pit or gulf under the sun. 
His miserere rose from his troubled breast. 

The scientist ma^^ fanc}' that the artist is trivially 
engaged in an ornamental business ; but the ornamen- 
tation is as near as is the skeleton to the centre and 
secret of the creation. Shall I do or see aught deeper 
than this morning's sunrise ? Color rides as far as doth 
the chariot of form in which it is borne. God is an 
artist ; whether he be scientist, who shall sa}^? Beauty 
plaj's on the features of persons and things, as does the 
soul in expression ; but our cutting through its lines, so 
inconceivabl}' thin, leads to nothing more profound. 
The sense of beaut}' and the native disposition to repro- 
duce it, and to figure the leagues of a landscape on the 
inches of a panel or bit of woven cloth, indicate a fac- 
ulty' as legitimate, as interior and immortal, as any 
tendenc}' to explore Nature and study her mechanical, 
chemical, or ^dtal operations, though the scholar be a 
Columbus, Harvey, Newton, or Darwin. 

Our best sign in education at present is industrial 
art. To learn and know how things should be done, 



36 PRINCIPLES. 

and especially how to do them, is to know as near as we 
can how they are. Jesus tells his disciples, doing the 
will informs with the doctrine. " If ye know these 
things, happ3^ are ye if ye do them." The world is will 
and forth-setting, says the German Schopenhauer. Who 
understands any enterprise like those engaged in it? 
The creation we are part of is no finished plan to be 
surve3'ed in its completeness, but a vast excursion and 
undertaking we cowork in with God, which would have 
failed and floundered had he ever paused one day in seven 
self-complacently to call it good. He is the miscreant 
who thwarts instead of running to further this design. 

It is therefore an over-speculative genius that puts 
the idea first. " In the beginning was the word," or the 
thought. In the beginning, adds Goethe, was the act, 
which is wisdom and love, evolution and revelation, fall- 
ing into line with which by our active powers is the way 
to discern the truth as well as to become acquainted 
with ourselves. The sculptured Phidian Greek Jupiter 
ter is an actiA^e rather than a reflective figure. God does 
not know himself theoretically, but in his off'spring and 
his work. He comes to consciousness in what he in- 
spires and brings to pass, and were else a m3'stery to 
himself! Our intelligence is not abstract and absolute : 
it waits on our performance, without which, as the uni- 
verse is a grand performance unconcluded, we shall 
never see where we are in our neglect of what we have 
to do ; for it is a false proverb, that action is narrow 
and thought broad, and a true one, that our first duty 
done clears up the second. So the world, made in six 
or in six millions of days, is not ended or ready to be 
burned, but needs many a stroke and touch yet ; and 



EDUCATION. 37 

the Japanese that takes a bit of metal and spends his 
life on one vase whose solid bronze beaut}' all Europe 
cannot match, is more on the discharge of an earthly 
mission and the direct road to heaven than the secta- 
rist in religion witli his scheme of salvation, or the dis- 
puter in the schools. Creator is the divine chosen 
name, or Evolver, as we shall soon say ; and the test is 
what we have done in the way of betterments of the 
poor imperfect fashions to which alone nature and hu- 
man nature have been equal as yet. 

But that we may not misdo or undo, we must have the 
well-considered plan. To accomplish, not simpl}' to con- 
sider it, is the everlasting object in view. No earthly 
business prospers without its runners ; and the highest 
name for the immortals is angels, — messengers that, if 
they did not % on their errands through earth and 
heaven and hell, ought to be stripped of their wings. 
For the sake of the intellect, if that be not onl}' eternal 
but supreme, we should favor the handiwork. Indus- 
trial is the true adjective for education. Developing 
schools is no misnomer. We shall never understand 
our Author or ourselves save in our work, and that is 
the best of detectives ; for be it a piece of joinery, a 
garden, poem, picture, in all by a law the man wiU 
put himself or his spirit. What nonsense that we do 
not know what sort of a man was Shakspeare ! Does 
Michael Angelo need other biograph}' than that auto- 
biography of which his brush was the pen? Who 
wants or can have a better histor}" of Washington All- 
ston than he relates in his Rosalie, Lorenzo and Jes- 
sica, Jeremiah, and Belshazzar's Feast? The French 
Millet in his wooden shoes tells with his pencil his 



38 PRINCIPLES. 

S3^inpath3^ with toil ; and Corot's painted sk}" and air 
and transfiguration of the landscape predict paradise. 
Said the veterinary doctor, " You must trot out your 
horse ; how can I tell what the matter is with him while 
he stands in the 3'ard ? " Action discloses health or 
disease in body or mind. 

But "where is no vision the people perish." Must 
not some idea of our nature and situation fit and furnish 
us for our stint of laborer, farmer, carpenter, cabinet- 
maker, machinist, artist, or artisan? The philosophic 
facult}'^ is, indeed, one to be educated. It is imperial 
and reigns, while the sciences are but prefects that gov- 
ern with local rule and must alwa3's justify their admin- 
istration at the central bar. But philosophy should 
beware of formalism, as reality can be caught in no net 
of phraseolog}' , nor the world put like straj' cattle in 
pound. Ever^^ perception is precious ; but truth is an 
endless game, and no one word will bear being repeated 
and pressed on. Be3'ond a certain point it becomes an 
idol, a substitute for the fact. No final statement is pos- 
sible. " He has overworked the participle," was Rufus 
Choate's complaint in court of a witness who recurred 
with suspicious frequenc3' to an expression he had evi- 
dently committed to memor3^ and learned by heart, to 
use as a trump-card. Logical and learned terms have 
no magical import or illumination, and are so over- 
worked by metaph3'sicians that plain people guess they 
are dealing with a black art, or with apothecaries' labels, 
unintelligible and hard either to read or pronounce. 
Every S3^stem is but a staging or step. The cit3^ of 
God is but in part surveyed or built ; and not a few 
who are neither color-blind nor deaf-mutes are devoid 



EDUCATION. 39 

of the philosophic, as man}' lack the mathematical ca- 
pacity. I learn that the class of a certain competent 
Harvard lecturer on Immanuel Kant fell down to one. 
All the explanations of that nature, which is a projec- 
tion of supernature, are provisional and no ultimate 
accounts. I explore mj' own talents, members, and 
desires, but cannot quite get my hand underneath my- 
self. I try to hoist the infinite. The roots of the tree 
of knowledge run too deep, and its fruit hangs too high, 
for me to dig to the tendrils or reach the topmost 
bough. I have to temper m}- Eve-like curiosit}" by 
sticking to some calling of teacher, preacher, architect, 
engineer, or other stint by which I can serve the little 
set I live in, giving up the ambition to circumnavigate 
tliat larger world than tempted the sails of Captain 
Cook. Poet, singer, painter, saint, you can be, but not 
comprehender of 3'our origin or end. 1 can do my 
duty, but not measure my doom. It pleases me to 
have nw destiny of immortalit}^, including a personal 
consciousness in the universal soul, planted on principle 
as well as instinct, or on actual resurrection or revealed 
promise. Whatever ma}'' become of the fuel in me, I 
feel the undying flame. Yet my fate is a mj'ster}' I go 
to and cannot without experience extend or bound. 
What a debt we owe to philosophy for grappling with 
subjects in which, beyond our dress and dinner and 
dickering, we are concerned, while b}' no science of 
matter are the questions entertained which we thank 
God we can ask ! To positivism life is a riddle and 
creation a conundrum which it gives up. It is despair 
of knowledge. But philosophy examines the manifesto 
of the vessel and Yoyage we are on. It at least hun- 



40 PRINCIPLES. 

gers and thirsts for information. It is not content with 
bread and water ; and by its expectation more than its 
argument establishes for us an eternal claim. It is 
proof itself of what it cannot prove. But quarrel 
among the philosophic as among the scientific class is 
aggravated and made inveterate by an intellectual 
ingredient which keeps every passion ahve, on its feet, 
and armed for the fray. Meantime, how well and 
wisely the immense secret is kept ! God knows too 
much to undermine the humility of his children by let- 
ting them know all. Wonder and worship are effect- 
ually provided for. Ever}^ experiment fails to reduce 
sentiment to understanding, like that first one in the 
garden. The higher we climb, the deeper into the pit 
of amazement, like some slipping and stunned adven- 
turer, we are flung. Let not religious people dread any 
devastation of their domain ; nor need the Pope try 
to fend the Church from wreck with any buffer- of syl- 
labus, encyclical, or Vatican decree. Nature herself is 
greater security than a college of cardinals against any 
swamping of the soul in its own acquisitions. Our 
astonishment will recur and still have its revenge. Its 
fountain is too deep to be drained. Under the probe of 
our analysis gushes an artesian well ; and aU our S3^n- 
thesis turns out to be but a gathering of sticks for 
kindlings to this interior fire we call prayer, of which 
our closet is the hearth. 

If, however, it be presumption to affirm possible 
knowledge of the whole, it is worse mistake to set 
limits or specify aught we cannot know. When a phi- 
losopher talks of the unknowable^ the adjectives and 
epithets he applies to it are absiu-d and have no gram- 



EDUCATION. 41 

matical sense. He had better hold his tongue and his 
pen. None can say how far knowledge will go, but it 
cannot overslaugh the religious sentiment ; for that is a 
faculty to be educated, which the constructive one can- 
not outrank. In the mental stratification nothing is 
more substantial or profound. Is not its impulse like 
the molten jet rather of the precious metals, silver and 
gold, through the coarser la^^ers of the globe ; and its 
secrecy the hiding of diamond and pearl in the earth 
and the sea? Yet sensuous curiosity, in our time so 
active, is held to be the onl}'- channel of import, and 
claimed as a monopoly for the mind ; and this trade- 
wind so blows that a deeper faculty encounters discredit 
and contempt. With us it is all to be a scholar and 
naught to be a dcA^otee. But that devotion cannot be 
crowded out which is no easy luxur}' of the vestr}^ or 
conventicle, like the puffing of a shoal of porpoises off 
the cape or spouting of a whale in mid sea, but a hold- 
ing of the breath for effort and effect, be3^ond force of 
wind, stream, or vapor. Yet the idea of it has gone 
out of fashion. We peer and do not pray ! On what 
a strong diet of decrees, election, native corruption, 
danger of hell-fire, promise of heaven to the faithful as 
a bait dropped by those apostolic fishers of men, our 
elders were fed ! Fifty years ago in New England the 
divine Being could not be ignored more than an iron 
pillar or the tent-pole over the patriarchs' heads. But 
now an atheist is as good as anybod3\ Having filed 
away all tlie old points, what strong meat of doctrine 
instead have we left? Miscalled freedom or radicalism 
in religion puts God into the category- of a perhaps. In 
our seats of education nothing is so odious to the hoy^ 



42 PKINCIPLES. 

as prayers^ which the}' miss or scramble to, half dressed ; 
and, one night in the college that bore me, the college- 
bell was ungeared, lowered to the ground, and thrown 
into the Androscoggin River. One of the strange icono- 
clasts had his shoulder hurt, and his soul, I doubt not, 
still more. Our Harvard inscription of " Christo et 
Ecclesise," if still read j^onder on the wall, how many 
a sluggard and profane truant is conspiring to chisel 
out ! Why not, if materialism, with a dozen so-called 
sciences at its beck, be right? Mr. Tyndall's irony of 
a pra3"er-gauge means that there is nothing to measure 
in this unmeaning prayer. Let him bring a sky-gauge, 
a star-gauge, or a heaven-gauge, or with his sinker 
touch bottom in his own soul ; then we will try his 
patent for hospitals, applying our petition to one ward 
and passing by another to see what difference it will 
make ! New infidelity, indeed, which proposes to cable 
the deep of spirit as well as the Atlantic bed ! "I 
w^gh a hundred and forty pounds, bat when I am mad, 
a ton," said one. There is tonnage of a ship and of a 
freight-car, but what is the burthen of a man? Has 
Moses, Napoleon, David, or Paul 3^et got into the 
scales? Not alone for its intrinsic enchantment and 
charm, but for its stimulus to the intellect and as the 
secret of genius, is it in order to insist on veneration as 
a power. If the mind be a debtor not simply to abstract 
study but also to art, so is it .to worship ; and the whole 
ecclesiastical establishment, bating nuisance of insincer- 
ity, might well be kept up simph' to illuminate. " The 
Lord shall light ni}' candle," said the Psalmist. " Thy 
word is a light unto niy feet and a lamp unto my path." 
Lowly waiting at the gates and door-posts of the One 



EDUCATION. 43 

who will not fail with his love and lustre to appear, shall 
serve our thought more than an}^ ambitious will-worship 
for success. But how men stand on tiptoe and strain to 
get their eyes above heads in a crowd ! How we run 
neck and neck, and get overstrained ! Neuralgia, paral- 
3^sis, and consumption await selfish aspirants who burn 
the midnight oil when the}' should be asleep. They die 
at forty or fifty, and we say they liaA^e worked too 
bard ! Indeed they have, hindering God's work in and 
through them, and never opening that humility which 
is his onlv door. Delicious awe before the Highest 
is worth all the discoveries of cotton-gin, mill-turbine, 
patent reaper, and field fertilizer, purely as an economic 
force. The Romans reared massive aqueducts, filling 
valleys and crowning hills, not understanding the law 
b}" which a flood would run with all inequalities of level 
through a little pipe. All we want for a nobler efflux 
is that head of power in the breast which genuine own- 
ing of Deit}' will supph', and which makes men as fresh 
and young at eight}' as at twenty, with feeling virgin 
and untouched. If, after the Latin motto, prudence is 
a gi*eat revenue, so is reverence. How men sweat and 
toil to beat in the arena or to distance in the race ! But 
when I tie to that Will which is a perpetual going forth, 
I feel like a skiff towed at a steamer's stern ; for we can 
use up gravitation sooner than God. My neighbor got 
tired pumping water into the tank at his house-top, and 
he put a van on his barn, over the well, so that it now 
furnishes kitchen and table and hose-sprinkler, with a 
fountain in front of his lawn into the bargain, while 
from his siesta he looks on. Doubtless we must work 
as well as wait ; but there is no work like subduing our 
own selfish will. 



44 PRINCIPLES. 

" At anchor laid, remote from home, 
Toiling I cry, ' Sweet Spirit, come! 
Celestial breeze, no longer stay, 
But swell my sails and speed my way.'" 

Cowper's prayer and its answer had the same source. 

Of this vital agency let us apprehend all we can ; but 
the fatal destitution is to be without the conscious push 
which set the planets in their orbits and brought our 
progenitors to these shores. Bow to and nurse the mo- 
tive power but for which the mightiest reflective brain is 
a hulk, a machine out of order, a train helpless and in 
the way, or an engine without stir ! The talents and 
acquirements of many men are like those cones or pyra- 
mids of cannon-balls rusting useless in the armory 3^ard ; 
for ammunition there must be powder and shot. Perse- 
vere, and let us have your last speculation, O formulator 
of the world, while we return to 3^ou our no better cri- 
tique ! The formula does not hold water j^et, hard 
though it may be, as in a roof or boat, to find the 
leak. The proof of progress will be the reducibleness 
of your terminolog}^ to some clearness of common par- 
lance and common sense, enlarging the circle of light 
beyond which still retreats the unknown and irreducible 
X ; for what a calamity were it to have the horizon really 
lifted and destroj^ed ! 

In this ascending series of faculties, after their values 
or complementary colors, what but an offshoot of the 
religious sentiment is the moral sense, it being to Kant 
that proof of Deit}^ which philosophy could not provide. 
All else may be illusory, but not this whisper of right 
and ought ordering duty even at the cost of death. 
Was calculation of social advantage the root or occasion 



EDUCATION. 45 

of conscience ? We only know that of all worthy his- 
tory conscience is the cause ; and when we delight in 
the beauty and fragrance of the blossom, we care not to 
anal^'ze it into the compost of rotting kelp malodorous 
on the soil. Our business is not with our genesis or the 
unreachable origin of aught in us ; it is with our bidding 
and task. Grandly indecomposable are the Ten Com- 
mandments, however the rock crumble on which they 
are writ ! What is authority but whatever voice can 
rebuke for sin ? The preacher needs no pulpit, cassock, 
apostolic succession, or ordination vows, if he be, like 
Garrison, the imperative mood of a nation to which all 
the indicative, subjunctive, and potential moods yield, 
unwilling statesmen dragged, big politic brains capitu- 
lating, and the armies of the republic obe3'ing at last 
what was but a solitary cry of Repent^ in the wilderness, 
at first. The American conscience has had such tuition 
on questions of freedom and slaver}', peace and war, 
temperance and strong drink, that the wonder is, so 
much dishonesty, selfish deceit, and benevolent Ij'i^g are 
left, to accuse our la3'ing stress on wit and cleverness 
rather than justice in our schools, with the natural con- 
sequence of a brood of politicians and churchmen who 
postpone truth to management and cunning, and with 
strange insensibility count it no dishonor, if they can 
carry their plans and save their traditions, to be insin- 
cere. It is " the abomination in the hol^' place" to-day, 
that the clerg}' cling to what has been handed down, 
however it contradict the new conclusions. We have 
not arrived, with advance of the whole line, beyond the 
notions of a six-da^'s' creation, universal deluge, bodily 
resurrection, tui'ning of water into wine, multiphcation 



46 PEINCIPLES. 

of loaves and fishes ; why not add the gridirons, ovens, 
and earthen pots? Sad show between worship and 
thought of an ever-deepening, widening gulf ; 3'et how 
matched and offset by the spectacle of the supercilious 
belligerents against the clerical cloth, who care but to 
deny or criticise, and fling with right good- will from their 
sling, unlike David's, the stone of denunciation, while 
they tender not the bread of life and truth. Give us 
the cob webbed cathedral -windows through which some 
light struggles, give us food mixed with gravel, rather 
than empty fighting and barren conceit ! Philip de Neri 
travelled far to see a famous saint, and directed him to 
pull off" his muddy boots, which the reputed holy man 
in his cell refused. "It is not a case," said Philip; 
"there is no sanctit}^ where there is no humility." To 
the theological reformers we must offer this test : Bring 
us your regiment of saints ; this is the onl}^ argument 
we cannot res-ist ! If you be sensual, self-seeking, sour 
and contentious, hke the rest, you are not in the host of 
God. The cliild rebuked for playing with his tin sol- 
diers on Sunda}^, answered, "Oh, mother, this is the 
army of the Lord ; " and it was a better troop than 
radicals or conservatives contending for emolument, 
oflSce, and honor in Church or State. "Your money 
is orthodox," said the beggar to my friend who waived 
the appeal for aid, and wanted to get off" on the ground 
of being a heretic. Is there any schism or heresy or 
heterodoxy in being candid and pure ? 

But character halts without aid of imagination, which 
our classes in Shakspeare and Browning, music and 
drawing, recognize not only as amusement and by-pla}' 
of the mind, but a co-ordinate power. Its work is 



EDUCATION. 47 

unhappil}' st3^1ed fiction ; for to idealize is to realize. 
Build, we are told, on the facts ; appl}^ the scientific 
method stricth' and universalh' to all the conduct of 
life. But the facts are low ! The}' are a historj' of the 
decline and fall of more than the Roman Empire. What 
are the facts but cinders and scoriae from the great Prov- 
idential furnace of the world ? ' ' Facts are stubborn 
things." They are angry, wrathful, sensual, swindling, 
deceitful too. No ; rather build on the principles, mat- 
ters of imagination. That it is all imagination, makes 
nothing a proper subject of contempt ; for what is 
imagination but the eye of the soul to see on planes 
and in directions never open to understanding and 
sense? Shall we appty the scientific method to the 
American flag or to the cross ? Shall we be entitled to 
no freedom or religion that we cannot get out of the 
microscope, dissecting-knife, and crucible? The scien- 
tific method was applied to the black man, and he came 
forth an ape, with some modern improvements and 
some characteristics dropped. Haeckel would apply 
the scientific method to the German schools, in the form 
of materialistic evolution for the basis of instruction ; 
but his elder and master, Virchow, objects. Haeckel 
sa^'s every atom of carbon has a soul, only without 
memor}', — a great lack, for that is to be without 
love, faith, worship, or hope ; and the burning of mil- 
lions of such souls every morning in our grates were 
no cause for regret. 

There is, then, not only the scientific, but the philo- 
sophic and poetic method. Does it put the air and the 
cloudsr for the ground ? The Montgolfier ascension has 
added to practical service and promises useful knowl- 



48 PRINCIPLES. 

edge as much as digging and delving after Sj^mmes's 
hole. Nothing would be more t3Tannical than logic or 
science, if allowed exclusive sway ; confining us to out- 
ward observation and inference, what a prison it would 
build for the mind ! Nor could all the inward psychologic 
generalizing dispense with that fresh vision and living 
inspiration which forbid any final inventor3'. We can- 
not take account of stock in the store where, like so 
many clerks, we are employed. Liberation for new 
enterprise the spirit asks and gives, and to material 
processes it must not be confined. Said a witty woman 
of her niece's sketches, " I suppose they are good ; they 
give me the same disagreeable feeling I always get from 
nature." When external things are pressed upon us, 
our refuge is language, letters, literature, as the child's 
escape from drill and routine is into the fairy-tale. 

But the main use of the imagination is to promote 
morals. It alone enables us to take another's point of 
view, to put ourself in his place, and look out of his 
eyes ; without doing which, how can we obey the golden 
rule? Jesus, looking at himself without self-pit}^ out of 
his murderers' eyes, surve3'ing his own crucifixion, not 
from the cross but the ground, and begging God's for- 
giveness for their ignorance, was a poet without writing 
verse. " He was," says my pianist, " the greatest mu- 
sician that ever lived." Only a sympathetic imagination 
begot such prayers or sublime assertions. "Before 
Abraham was I am." " He loved me before the foun- 
dation of the world." "I and my Father are one." 
"In this place is one greater than the temple." "I 
am the resurrection and the life." Homer, Dante, and 
Shakspeare shrink before such an investiture of the 



EDUCATION. 49 

soul. That was a drama ; the sun itself a candle which 
the play was worth. 

Before an educated imagination,. cruelty to our fellow- 
creatures will disappear. There is good business in 
our fisheries on the Grand Banks, but fishing is a 
detestable sport. Is that a fine and well-dressed wo- 
man I see baiting her hook and drawing in her vic- 
tim to bleed with regular -spasms to death? All her 
silks and gems shall not persuade me of her gradua- 
tion. Cruelty is her bracelet and ring. Nor are men 
more cultivated in their savage hunt for game. The 
world is wax to spirit. Imagination is our retreat 
from hard fact, — that staple of science, under the axe 
of whose guillotine not onl}- much that is false and su- 
perstitious, but somewhat noble and beautiful falls. 

On our scale of facult}^ the next mark is love. But 
can love be educated? Yes, if it be more than a pro- 
pensity. Men try in- vain, with poor prospect which 
does not brighten, to build societ}^ on any opinion of 
God, man, or nature. No creed is broad enough. We 
must build on that yearning toward and longing for 
each other which we call love, and which mau}^ a brute 
may teach. The horse in willing obedience- and the 
shepherd-dog in self- forgetting love, and both in uncon- 
tainable desire to please and do what the master they 
worship wants, are better Cliristians than half the peo- 
ple one meets going to church. Love slurs the differ- 
ence, sinks dispute, seeks concord, will compound and 
compromise quarrel, and jdeld every point but honor 
and truth. But is not this like having none of the back- 
bone of which we are so conscious and proud? I fear 
that obstinate folk, planting themselves on their propo- 

4 



50 PRINCIPLES. 

sitions, sometimes miss the best uses of a backbone ! A 
backbone is not a ramrod or crowbar, and a man with 
the choicest specimen of it is not a granite Bunker-hill 
monument standing high or a dumm3-engine moving 
through the street. The spinal column is not perfect 
when any intervertebral is ossified. It was made not 
for erectness only, but to bow with. Leaning on and 
to one another as neighbors and friends, we are per- 
sonally strong, and a community exists ! Amid censors 
and critics, foreign and domestic, searching for one 
armor-joint, and ready to light and draw blood from 
each bit of exposed flesh, ingenious to find the un- 
protected point, foes of that peace which is the mind's 
repose, like the insects that disturb our natural sleep, 
and well figured by William Blake in his painting of 
an enormous human flea, we have all had experience 
of some piece of mortal goodness, most likely in a 
woman's shape, — some dear sister, some living and 
blessed sacrifice in a mate or aunt, — by her presence 
dispersing thoughts of suicide, restoring us from despair, 
refreshing us for duty, and convincing us, beyond all 
arguments in the schools, of the being of God. There 
is a light in some human eyes that reveals him, and a 
tone of voice that is his speech. We touch him in the 
pressure of a hand ! All may be ashes to-morrow save 
that by the sister so expressed. It is no congenital 
gift or grace of Benevolence large ^ as the phrenologists 
sa3^ Much pining by herself for the S3'mpathy which 
the lady^ or bread-giver, afl'ords, and sore heart-break 
for lack of good cheer, have gone for savory ingredients 
into the spiritual bill of fare, and spread that diviner 
board. She invites us to what at some well-remem- 



EDUCATION. 51 

bered period of her life she never got, but knows the 
full value of, and means that nobod}'^ in her circle, if 
she can help it, shall want. We speak of the God-man ; 
she is the God-iuoman^ and that jDarticular Virgin Mary 
is the one I would have the pra3'ers of, and myself 
worship as part of Deity, even that essence which out- 
ward nature is not moral enough to disclose. But can 
this quality be taught in any^ academy ? We do not 
desire a professor of the heart. But if the mercy be 
left out of the curriculum, if the old sacrifice be not 
repeated as a daily offering, and if what, when over- 
demonstrative, we laugh at as sentiment be not every- 
where latent and imphed as a magnetism that animates 
and unites, all the expert schooling is vanity and 
naught. 

The affections may be unfolded ; but is there any 
training of the will^ or indeed is there any will to train ? 
What shall the power be called that binds and wields 
all the rest, that enables the man to fix his object and 
repeat his blows, and persevere to the end in his aim, 
and fling himself — the most resistless and effectual 
catapult — against intrenched wrong? Is the soul, as 
a science spurious to some of us would hint, only an 
automaton, like Mr. Huxley's frog, that, with the slow 
turning of the wrist, crept as slowly from the palm to 
the back of Mr. Huxley's hand ? A little more weight 
of determining, from a motive without determination in 
one scale or the other, does it make Richard b}' turn in 
the lists the black sluggard or to the Saracens the all- 
dreaded knight? Did circumstances make Cromwell, 
whose portrait tells us he had made up his mind? 
Did the stirring and piping times with the mother, as 



52 PRINCIPLES. 

she was about to become, cause Napoleon to be rather 
the child of Revolution than her own? and did an acci- 
dental confluence of agitated particles produce thus the 
mightiest modern force ? I must leave the debate be- 
tween the Necessarians and the dictionar}^^ — which 
contains will and its equivalents in all tongues, — or 
rather between them and tlie Maker of all, if language 
be, like its organs, divinely produced, only suggesting 
that it concerns the credit of our seminaries of learn- 
ing to turn out doers as well as scholars with their 
premature baldness, untimely spectacles, indecisive 
characters,, and incompetent limbs. We have the kin- 
dergarten, which owns the active and executive in us ; 
let us have menschengarten^ too. 

What we do well in this world we must do, as the 
shipmaster bids his crew, with a will. Deeper than this 
ego-note of a separate self is the wonderful Me, deriv- 
ing from which rids us of our individualism, — it being 
not ourselves, but our self. Our selves are doomed to 
perdition. They are fugitive slaves that find no rest 
or home. Our Self is the Eternal, whom we adore and 
serve. When you touch my body I say, as did the 
Lord respecting the woman, "Who touched me?" be- 
cause my will possesses and unifies every fibre and 
nerve of the moral property I am trustee of and must 
account for to my and your self. 

In this schedule of education the fact of sex, bisecting 
our constitution, must not be overlooked. Man has 
more brain than woman, but also more body and beard ; 
and woman has more fineness, if less strength. She is 
more angel, and he more animal. Proportion and qual- 
ity are the main things ; and if many a woman has 



EDucATioisr. * 63 

desired to be a man, and no man to be a woman, it is 
that our sisters have more love and respect, and think 
too well of us, while we have not done justice to them. 
Yet from their inspiration and society we get more than 
from all the pictures and books. Is any power on the 
list left out of their frame ; or is one missing from the 
chest of tools God gives us to sharpen and use ? It is 
the stigma of our relation to them thus far, and flagrant 
proof of wrong in the past, that even a common moral 
standard has not been allowed. A man's honor and a 
woman's have not meant the same thing. Purity has 
not been considered a virtue equall}" binding on him ; 
nor, b}^ the code of custom in some quarters, is truth as 
stricth' required of her, but cunning or concealment 
suffered as a weapon in default of force, as some beasts 
'defend themselves with tooth, claw, and horn, and 
others, in their weakness, — such as the fox, hare, and 
mole, — with craft, flight, and burrowing. The author 
of that interesting story, "Far from the Madding 
Crowd," sa3^s, no woman but would lie for her lover, 
to protect him on occasion of need. I have inquired 
in successive companies of women, and been uniformly 
assured it is so. But shall the scale of right be shaken 
and changed b}^ sex, and ^drtue not be virtue, the very 
same on both sides and in either part of that one image 
of God which it takes man and woman together to 
make? Whatever, with him or with her, the variations 
and derelictions maj^ have been, and however winked 
at, 3^et in the coming man and the coming woman we 
swear these diversities and contradictions of a double 
scale shall not continue to exist; but rectitude, sanc- 
tity, and veracity be the same with both as in God ! 



64 PEINCIPLES. 

If there be deference, let it be from him, the mightier 
mate. It was the supreme charm in Abraham Lincoln, 
and one thing fitting him to be the patient and provident 
President of the quarrelling United States, that he could 
endure injury in private without sign or sound of com- 
plaint. What a shepherd that calm, noble, all-enduring, 
unirritated, and high-uplifted head became to our huge, 
strajdng, bellowing, and recalcitrating flock ! Can 3'ou, 
without resentment, let your hair be pulled, your flesh 
beaten or bruised? You are qualified for office. 

Education in every branch not for the other sex? 
In what line have not their laurels, while men talk of 
spurs, been already won? Who are among the great 
modern singers but Lind and Sontag, and chief actors 
but Rachel and Bernhardt ? George Sand and George 
Eliot are by some judges put on a level with Balzac and* 
Scott. In the arts of painting and sculpture the promise 
in this country is with young womanhood, and the per- 
formance as well. In eloquence there are womanly 
patterns for preachers and lecturers to admire. In the 
theor}' and practice of medicine and surgery, unless you 
pick with care your male combatants, some women will 
bear off" the palm. Woman's sphere is a hemisphere, 
half of man's ; and no collegiate or other culture which 
she asks should be denied. 

If education take in all qualities, both mystic and 
athlete, in its span, and a retiring of the agitator in 
favor of the educator be the millennial sign, who is the 
educator but the one in whom all the powers are trained ? 
None can teach but the taught. The single point of 
religion raises doubt, as of a kingdom to pass away. 
Is rehgion then, as Shelley said, a curse? But the 



EDUCATION. 55 

facult}^ is intrinsic and universal. Without its exercise 
and activity we have but the moiety of a man. It 
were a pseudo-radicalism to consider it a specialty of 
each individual instead of a common property, or that 
it can be parcelled out among sects, more than the sun, 
rain, and air ; it being a spmt devoid of which any 
specimen of human nature is more defective than one 
born or become deaf or blind. In our civil war it was 
held a fatal objection to disunion that the Mississippi 
River could not be divided. Religion is the Mississippi 
of the soul. It is water of life for a country and for the 
world. Unbelief springs from the notion that it can be 
monopolized by denominations or spent in forms. But 
the more one has of it, the less possible is it for him to 
be strictly Orthodox, rigidly Episcopalian, a bigoted 
Catholic, tame Liberal, or Free Religious in the sense 
of putting freedom from it for freedom in it. For your 
articles. Unitarian or Trinitarian, I care not ; but a 
reverent Romanist rather than an irreverent Protestant 
should have my child in his hands. The man — for 
such a woman I never knew — who stands not lowly and 
awe-struck in this wonderful world ; who has got over 
or never had an}- surprise in being here ; who laughs 
at human pretension to the divine breath, and makes 
the elements not our servants but the ground of our 
being, alike our womb and receiving tomb, and construes 
existence as no share of infinity, but the toy and trifle 
of a da}' ; or, in mood more sombre, however sincere, 
bows his neck to fate as an officer and annihilator to 
execute the sentence of the law, abjuring the Father, by 
Pagan and Christian adored, — can have no lot in that 
liberal education which would be a misnomer without 



66 PRINCIPLES. 

the central love. Leaving out that, your physical sci- 
ences are but grave-clothes, and the metaphysical, as 
the Bethel minister said, "fire-flies in the swamp, —r- 
flash, flash, and all dark again.'* 

But our feeling of the measureless and all-measuring 
cannot be quenched. We have motive and courage to 
our task if we develop what time cannot devour. Lo ! 
how the germs wait to be quickened in the youthful 
breast, however weeds have the start and get ahead ! I 
have been disheartened by the thrifty thistle and bull- 
brier in my field. But cutting with scythe the hollow 
stems of the first, ere the wind wafts the downy seed, 
lets in the rain to rot the roots ; and clearing with a 
hedge-bill the wiry brambles of the last permits oak and 
sassafras to spring up in their place. I have the dehght 
to see the vegetable enemies vanish, like bears and 
wolves, before a better progen}^ and growth. The 
fittest in or out of us, O Mr. Darwin, will survive, not 
by a material or mechanical law, but with help and by 
the will to redeem the soil of nature and the mind, — to 
drain, plough, harrow, plant, prune, check the cater- 
pillars, and scare the crows. Agriculture is a cipher 
for spirit-culture ; and freedom, though blood-bought, 
is worthless without fruit. Freedom is room for virtue, 
a way to truth, door of the temple, porch of the heaven 
of love ; yet let freedom go to the winds if it be not 
that ! We- have freedom enough, and enough of nothing 
else. The clamor for it is a baby-cry. Would you 
have it for its own sake? Then it is your idol, not 
youi* God. 

Therefore the educator must distinguish between 
evil and good. The tiller of the land is no optimist 



. EDUCATION. 57 

to put brambles and deadly nightshade on a level with 
corn- and wheat. If the yellow wax-wood and white- 
weed are among the quarter of a million of plants whose 
"uses have not been discovered," the farmer, despite 
such transcendental notion, thinks extermination the best 
service, nevertheless, to which they can be put, and 
discredits their potential virtue in hating their actual 
vice ; and the moral cultivator cannot regard drunken- 
ness, adultery, lying, and cheating as materials of good- 
ness, a way to heaven or means of grace. JS^o, they 
are at least and at best but lost ground ! The thorns 
and the apple-peru occupy room, and suck up the juices 
of the soil as thoroughly as the lil}^ and the rose ; and 
human dissipation turns to waste the territory that 
might abound in beauty and fruit. 

No doubt we learn from our sins ; for there is naught 
God cannot get somewhat out of for our improvement. 
But it is a false notion that without the negative the 
positive cannot be taught. Must love go to school to 
hatred, and shall falsehood be the instructor of truth ? 
From what deception did the faithfulness, and from 
what malignity did the beneficence, of the Deity come ? 
Experience of transgression is but the second or third 
best, rather the worst way by which obedience can be 
reached. " In all these hard times," said the preacher, 
"the wages of iniquit}^ have not fallen a jot;" and 
those wages are misery and want, postponement and 
dela}', bitter reflection and cautery of hell-fire. 

Let us arrest the days for their dues to us, and seize 
the angel's blessing from every one. We are on the 
sea of life which they make ; let us not suffer them to 
slip as waves under the boat which they ought to bear 



68 PRINCIPLES. 

on, nor gliding and treacherous to drift us upon the 
rocks. Let us trim our sail to calm or storm, and be 
ready for the gale while in halcj'on weather we court 
and catch the breeze. Surveying the smooth and smil- 
ing main, a shipmaster, who had suffered losses on the 
deep, said with bitter jest to the sea, "You want, do 
you, another cargo of figs? " Let us have a freight and 
bark that cannot be cast away. 

Much is said of the waste of means and life in empty 
sloth of the non-producers, in flame of rum that goes 
down, and smoke of tobacco that goes out ; but all these 
are leaks and ruins of the uneducated or miseducated 
man, of the drone, or the slave bound to his cup or 
hoisted on the end of his pipe or cigar. He is not 
quite educated yet. ' His habits are not accomplish- 
ments. Vulgar bo3's can imitate them all. They han- 
ker after his dregs and drippings, and go round picking 
up the stumps he throws awa}^, as he corrupts the rising 
generation with his mature vice. A mechanist said, 
Niagara could turn all the machinery" of the world ; but 
what a cataract of intellectual power runs to nothing from 
those indulged and injurious appetites, which education 
would prevent or cure ! As the Greek sage said, "I am 
temperate because I follow my desires." Let us live close 
to spirit, and to its offspring, nature ! That is a teacher 
holy and wise, and by a process deeper than mechanism 
or chemistr}! it keeps the world clean, taking up every 
atom of waste or filth into fruit and beauty ; from the 
mud bringing the pond-lily, making drain-pipes of the 
air and sea, setting man- an example to utilize the ord- 
ure and offscouring of great cities, till marsh and desert 
blossom as the rose, and orchards and vineyards dis- 



EDUCATION. 69 

place the brier and the bog. Let us imitate her gi'owth 
and newness, her repentance and reform, perceiving 
that no substance of mind or matter is evil, and that 
only by misdirection and excess we sin. Our naughti- 
ness is our nothingness, and our being is the amount 
of our virtue and joy. 

To educators with such aims, all-hail ! How infec- 
tious with 3'outh is ever}^ sort of quality in the elder and 
guide ! What mental photographs unfading remain of 
those Bowdoin officers at whose feet I sat, — Cleave- 
land with his zeal over human skeletons, and minerals, 
the earth's bones ; Packard's glow at the Greek roots ; 
Smj^the's ardor for mathematical theorems at the black- 
board ; Upham's meekness, more impressive than his 
expertness in the Latin tongue, — Upham the mystic 
and lover of peace, who, when Fort Sumter was under 
fire, told the 3^oung men consulting him he had not 
deserted his principles, but, if the}^ must fight, they 
would never have a better chance ! These men's souls 
did for the successive classes in their charge more than 
all their understanding' and acquirement. They were 
unconscious of their best. 

But no amount of special or universal information, 
though one had encyclopaedias b}" heart, will fit one for 
an educator without that knowledge of human nature 
which makes him, if not a divine, j'et a diviner, with a 
divining-rod for the springs in the scholar's mind, a 
true fortune-teller, from traits and for destinies deeper 
than the flesh. Custom-house appraisers, engine in- 
spectors, sealers of weights and measures, calculators 
of steam and of water-power, should be no better 
versed than he with the stuflE" he is to judge of. He 



60 PKINCIPLES. 

should be a discoverer of inclination, a magnet of enthu- 
siasm and curiosity, a detective of secret inclining or 
indisposition, a tempter of talent, and justifier and ful- 
filler of the type every soul is born with, to make the 
best and most of it, revealing to the student — what so 
often he is most ignorant of — himself. Louis Agassiz 
put his point strongl}^, that every pupil should have 
an instructor all alone. Several in a class may com- 
pete with and complement each other ; yet how it 
concerns the commonwealth, more than its mines and 
quarries, that riches of individual genius be not hid ! 
You influence and unfold others less by what you know 
and say than by what you are, less by the arginnent 
which makes people remark what a good lawj^er you 
would have been than by the worthy act ; and "the act 
reacts on the temper to confirm and expand. The 
historian says that by the terrible French and English 
wars in the Low Countries the foreheads were flat- 
tened and the occiputs bulged. What a sober lesson 
we get from the fact of mutual lilieness between those 
who live long together ! This common growth of men 
and women unawares comes not of talk, more than do 
plants or vegetables in a bed. Through 3^our silence 
your disposition radiates, and your affection .descends 
like the rain. After all your reasoning and remon- 
strance, your patience, or the stillness you retreat to, 
works on your pupil or j^our child or an}^ mate more 
than your nice discrimination or eloquence, so abundant 
and comparatively cheap. The stars do not expostu- 
late with the comets which they draw ! The college 
boys tell the truth to the professor and dear pastoT who 
is their friend, but hate spies and informers, and meet 



EDUCATION. 61 

trick with trick. How contagious is deceit, a game 
that will never lack partners on either side ! In a cer- 
tain institution, near fifty 3'ears ago, two students were 
out in the yard in the edge of the evening, tr3-ing to 
fix the places of the constellations with the help of a 
celestial globe. One of the Faculty made upon them a 
stealthy descent. Seeing him approach, and at once 
perceiving his suspicion of a bonfire, then a favorite 
amusement with the undergraduates, they maliciously 
so handled their lamp as to fetch him rapidly to the 
spot. Fancy his disappointment, mortification, and dis- 
comfiture, in the full volle}^ of his expected discovery of 
their crime, when they presented only their innocent 
and quietly upturned survey of the heavens to his aston- 
ished gaze ! With an involuntary^ exclamation of dis- 
gust at himself, if not admiration of them, and a doubt 
in their minds whether his satisfaction might not have 
been greater to have found them in fault, he withdrew. 
Let the teacher never set a snare ! He may catch or 
be caught. To educate in lying he is sure. 

•Education is liberation from narrowness. Some ex- 
clusive notion of intelligence is the lure of every voca- 
tion. I have known one who thought painting alone 
supremely worthy of a man. Simon St^'lites judged, it 
was to pray. How often preaching the gospel to pre- 
pare for another world is called the only proper business 
of this ! With many, philanthropy swallows up other 
pursuits. But natural science has cut so wide a swath 
in our day, and mowed down so many superstitions, 
that, like kings planting their flags on new shores, and 
claiming continents for their own, it would cut off all 
rivals, and assert over the whole planet ' eminent do- 



62 PRINCIPLES. 

main, as if dissection of the globe and its contents 
were the ro3'al avenue to truth. Is the structure of 
things the single subject of inquiry, and is appearance 
all there is of reality ? 

Education implies personality, and that our powers 
do not evolve by a law apart from our own and others' 
will. In the crude substance of our nature, some things 
of more worth are to be brought out, the animal left, 
the man or angel delivered ; and this under some supe- 
rior or supernatu^ral lead. As we extricate- mineral, 
metal, or gem from the earth's bowels, and prize it 
above gravel or dirt, as one tree, oak, or elm is chosen 
and cherished more than another, a poplar or birch, — so 
we have comparative valuation of human traits. Every 
religion is from some prophet, every government has a 
founder, forms of society have their .fathers, and in- 
structors are indispensable to schools. 

Education must not leave the bod}^ out. Is he edu- 
cated who, like a clown that sits for a picture or enters 
fine company, knows not what to do with his hands — 
"these pickers and stealers," as the poet calls them — 
but to pick and steal, whose mouth has cunning and his 
right hand none? The man that can swim, resuscitate 
a drowning person, hoist a sail, hoe corn, kill potato- 
bugs, stop a runaway horse, confront a burglar, carry 
an invalid, make or mend, has a culture, not of muscle 
only but of brain and mind, of which the do-nothing's im- 
potent spine and fingers are devoid. He may be learned, 
but he is not trained. What a nuisance he is in a civil 
crisis, incompetent defender of the injured, and cipher 
in a mob ! He may speak the vernacular correctly, and 
understand many a dialect ; but what save paper-cur- 



EDUCATION. 63 

rency, irredeemable greenbacks, are his words not 
backed up with deeds? 

Some debate has arisen over a recent proposition that 
the only essential point in a lady's or gentleman's edu- 
cation is to speak well the mother- tongue. The qualifi- 
cation of such a statement is, that it is as indispensable 
to do as to speak. " Beauty is its own excuse for be- 
ing ;" but " handsome is that handsome does." In any 
author is somewhat more important than his art, namelj^, 
the will, in whatever word or deed, to serve God and 
his fellow-men in an}^ task to which hand or tongue be- 
3'ond or within his calling may be lent. 

We Americans are too haughty, too sure of our pre- 
eminence among the nations, and too confident in our 
destiny, to own our deficiencies or repent of our sins. 
We look at the melancholy wrecks of fortune caused by 
ignorance and transgression, and only a few monitors 
faintly whisper their regrets ! We consider as fate what 
was choice. The dishonest man was our neighbor, and 
we are tender, and hesitate to point the moral for the 
young to take note of; while Scandal with her busy 
tongue and Rumor with her thousand trumpets can noise 
abroad matters of taste and social relations of minor 
consequence, tithing the mint, anise, and cummin of 
propriet}', and overlooking the weighty presumptions 
of the law. But let us understand, appeals to con- 
science fail, unless indorsed by development of the 
mind. A true biography would tell the story of men 
who have fallen to disgrace and poverty from high 
places of riches and power, because they refused to 
learn, and thought they were such wiseacres that they 
could not be taught by others in their own hne of busi- 



64 PEiisrciPLES. 

ness, and refused to think there was in the community 
any such thing as common-sense to which they should 
open their ej-es and ears, but wore blinders of pride 
and conceit, and could look only in one way. Nothing 
lives but can teach us something, — a dog by his quicker 
scent or sight ; a horse by his hearing or by an instinct 
of danger, making him turn in the right direction, or 
stop, in a dark night, on the brink which we behold 
not. 

A true history of our own country would calculate losses 
incurred from want of that generous culture which in- 
spires good judgment even in worldly affairs. Avarice 
alone does not accumulate, nor acquisitiveness acquire, 
nor haste- to be rich enrich. Look at the enormous 
squandering on premature schemes of roads and mills, 
for which there was no need or use proportioned to the 
outlay of means ! We could have nursed the liberal 
arts which we have so neglected, and saved our super- 
fluous energy, so injuriously spent, and had more prop- 
erty. Had we educated the affections, which moderate 
the propensities, we should have, for beauty and bounty 
and all charitj^, the vast sums lavished in the burning 
of tobacco and the making of alcohol to bm-n us. An 
uneducated people will not, by force of prohibitory 
laws, or of societies and agents armed with statutes 
against the circulation of indecent books and prints, be 
either temperate or pure. An uneducated nation will 
not, if it be strong, keep the peace, but vent its animal 
passions; like England, still hinting a name half brute 
and half man, as she rushes to butt and gore in Afghan- 
istan and Zulu-land, with reasons of policy, and for ex- 
cuse the rectifying of frontiers thousands of miles away. 



EDUCATION. 65 

An uneducated man will not be a better soldier or civil- 
ian, nor an uneducated woman a nobler wife or mother ; 
and the animals will be too truly our next of blood, and 
the angels our far-away cousins and unrecognized rela- 
tions, a sort of pictures and figures of speech, while we 
remain, as we are, an uneducated race. 



66 PEINCIPLES. 



III. 

DEITY. 

IF we have no logical proof to offer of God, it is be- 
cause a derived were a secondar^^ Divinity, and so 
the proposition were prior to him from which he could 
be inferred, as Saturn preceded Jupiter in the heathen 
myth. But what we worship must be as much in the 
premise as in the conclusion. Alpha as well as Omega. 
His case would go by default, could we bring him into 
court. He is not, if he be left at the mercy of our argu- 
ment. If he exist not in self-demonstration to the soul 
humbly owning itself as his offspring, he will never ap- 
pear in the world. Constellation or protoplasm, upper 
or under firmament, will be searched for him in vain. 
Only to some hints of his presence do we venture to 
point. 

Whether we affirm or deny him, we cannot get rid of 
his idea^ which the atheist assumes while he contradicts. 

"Himself from God he could not free," 

is true not alone of the cathedral-builder, but of the 
hod-carrier, and even of the profane swearer that takes 
the holy name in vain. " O God, though he believed 
not in thy being, he obeyed thy law," prayed Theodore 
Parker beside a professed atheist's bier. Must not a 
lawgiver for the conscience have been needful, had the 



DEITY. 67 

atheist analyzed his thought? He cannot be seen in 
nature with the naked eye ; but " all physics lead to the 
sea of metaph^'sics ; " and of this question no denial 
will ever dispose. But we have, in this age, such a 
childish pleasure in breaking into and discovering the 
springs of this great toy of the material world, that the 
ph3'sicists have come to indulge themselves with holding 
the metaphysicians in unmeasured scorn. Yet, as the 
philosophic Dr. Walker said, if these latter are to be 
tried, " let them have the privilege, common to all Eng- 
lish blood, of a jury of their peers." 

It is, however, the modest ground of ignorance on 
which the modern atheist sometimes takes his stand. 
We are*, he saA'S, on board a vessel whose ports of en- 
try and of discharge and the fortune of whose \ojsLge 
are alike unknown, and with whose commander we are 
unacquainted. All to our mind is uncertaint}-, and all 
in fact is doom. But I have learned in crossino; the 
ocean that this illustrative commander is no gossip. 
He ma}' be stowed away in the cabin or walking on the 
paddle-bridge, absent from sight while we saunter and 
talk in sunshine and calm, and awake while we sleep in 
the tempestuous night ; not communicative of his plans, 
allowing no conversation with the man at the w^heel, 
and having in the lower regions, where the furnace is 
fed, servants as unseen and taciturn as himself. 

Sensuous observation does not discover God. But 
truth is not made out of microscopic particulars. It is 
an order and connection impl3'ing an ordainer and con- 
nector. What were a stone to L^-ell, plant to Linnaeus, 
star to Kepler, or human soul to Plato, without the 
thread on which kindred natures are strung ? Action, 



•68 PBINCIPLES. 

however private, is always in actual concert, and debate 
is in committee ; a " third party " appointing the first 
and second is taken for granted to decide in any differ- 
ence of judgment or plan. Inspiration is a reality, how- 
ever stated ill. Did any flesh and blood ever exist more 
trul}^ than his daimon to Socrates, Jehovah to Moses, 
or the Father to Jesus, or than does a Holy Spirit to him 
b}^ whom it is asked? The mountain itself is a mirage, 
and the sea but a vapor, and the wind a figure of speech 
for this ghostly force. We catch a whiff of its breeze. 
What the prophets blazed with is a spark in us or latent 
heat, from which comes many a despatch for our con- 
science, pallor on our face, and quiver to our nerves. 
Let me note in several directions signs of the super- 
human in the lawful and ordinary working of the human 
mind. 

First, what we in a true metaphor call the thirst for 
information. Why or whence this curiosity insatiate, 
whose eagerness a dog's barking at the hole in the wall 
poorly signifies, whose game in the secret of the uni- 
verse is never reached, 3^et whose pursuit never stops ? 
How delightfully we are tantalized and put off! We 
want to know, and never know enough. For every 
question closed, like the old hydra-heads, two open, — 
about health and disease, beasts, insanity, organic and 
inorganic life. I heard a mathematician say, "We must 
get to the constellation Hercules some time for a better 
observation of what is now hid from us in the star-strewn 
space." Where or whence the motive for such search 
but in a supreme intelligence and its counterpart of a 
boundless field? We are little children looking around 
wistfully in our father's factory, who timidly venture to 



DEITY. 69 

handle some of his tools. We are mocked and cruelly 
handled ourselves if. driven out, or told we can never 
understand. Not only to investigate but to love the 
truth, and stand by it at all costs of the stake or the 
cross, is an impulse that signifies the Deity from which 
it comes. 

In devotion to the right is evinced the same infinite 
force. Does not the cashier, refusing to unlock the 
safe, and choosing to die rather than betray his charge, 
draw on an immense energ}' beyond any reservoir of 
private will ? The St. Lawrence River no more commu- 
nicates through a chain of lakes with the clouds and 
sea and old deluge that drowned the world, than such 
a conscience is derivative from God. No utUity or cal- 
culation can furnish for it any gauge. When you will 
find the end of the root of the tree of life, and can lay 
your axe to it or tear it out of the soil in which it grows, 
then 3'ou can tell b}^ weight and measure this moral 
sense. 

In love we also get be^^ond anj^ Atlantic- cable sound- 
ings. - He is ignorant who doubts pure afi'ection, or 
aflSrms that our object is our own pleasure, twist it how 
we will. We admit disinterested friendship betwixt 
some men ; but we sink ourselves to the last degrada- 
tion as we deny it betwixt man and woman. We base 
our unbelief on a thousand false stories of spies with 
whom gossip is gospel, and we overlook ten thousand 
untainted ties. Nothing is more common than mutual 
faith and devoted love. A hundred painted pieces of 
flesh and blood pass in the panorama of life. Why on 
this one figure do my eyes fix, and why for it are my 
faculties pledged ' ' till death us do part " ? I know not. 



70 PRINCIPLES. 

God knows. It is so only because he is! Will one 
say it is nature, not God? But nature means what 
is horn^ and implies the principle that bears and begets.- 
In it alone the one and universal are at peace. Matter 
is multitude and a mob of elements, that hustles its 
votary while he lives and will push him till he dies. It 
is a cage which the soul like a bird must escape from 
to soar and sing. If our spirit were but an oaten straw, 
it will make music when the Holy Spirit blows. How- 
ever ingeniously we build our eai^thly schemes of com- 
fort and knowledge, an earthquake is coming to us and 
to all we hold dear, to shake the ant-hills we swarm in. 
Only on the Rock of Ages can we rest. Materialism is 
no foundation, but a swamp. Some centuries since, 
the magnetic pole diverged from that of the earth's 
axis, but, unable to swing bej^ond a certain point, it 
afterwards began to return. The human mind may 
wander from, but must go back to coincide with, the 
divine. Christianity is our best social mark of this 
celestial inclination away from all declination of error 
and declension of sin. For radical and free religious 
speculation let there be room. But before it can dis- 
place established religion, it must have positive elec- 
tricity. It must become a leaven in the lump of this 
world's dough, turn its criticism to enthusiasm, spread 
among the people, and plant a church. Long blowing 
among the ashes and raising clouds of dust will not 
come to so much in house-warming as one coal of fire 
that may kindle a great matter ; and some altar of sac- 
rifice alone can furnish the live coal. 

But, say the atheists, there is no knowledge of God 
in all this fancy and faith. What is knowledge ? If it 



DEITY. 71 

be absolute and complete comprehension, then we know 
nothing of ourselves or of our neighbors, of a clod on 
the earth or. of the ox3^gen that has been discovered 
in the sun. But if knowledge be apprehension^ — the 
realizing of subject or object to our thought, be it of 
fellow-creature or our Creator, — then we know as cer- 
tainly as we are. But how do we know? The scien- 
tific process is to observe facts and put them in rows 
which we call laws ; and God is no arrangement or fact, 
but supreme factor prior to both. Knowledge is not 
sensuous alone. It cannot be so altogether, and may 
not be so at all. By every affection and power the pre- 
hensile soul in us seizes and clings to that which an- 
swers to itself, and whatever it grasps, so far it knows. 
The eyegi-asps one way, and the ear another. Touch, 
taste, and smell are spies and informers. But there is, 
be3-ond their scope, an imaginative, wondering, loving 
knowledge. Sensible knowledge stops with the surface, 
and matter is all surface. But detection of tendency or 
analogy penetrates the shell to the kernel of nature. 
We truly call this divining. It is genius and the germ 
of all knowledge that is deeper than we have in common 
with the beasts. It is the same process in natural 
philosophers like Newton and Kepler,- and in pious sages 
such as Thomas a Kempis, Tauler, and Jacob Behmen. 
If the former know nature, the latter know God. Do 
they only dream? But this phantom or phenomenon of 
nature, which night blots and morning restores, ma}^ be 
illusor}' and transitory, while I cannot conceive of thought 
as a passing show. Sense and understanding could not 
know or care to know aught, were they insulated from 
the rest of the mind and could they explore, apart from 



72 PRINCIPLES. 

any feeling of trust, any joy in discovery, any aspiring 
to perfection, or any poetic rounding into picture of the 
living classes and kingdoms and the landscape in which 
the}^ are contained. Have we knowledge in a map or 
chart, as by Mercator's projection, or in the varnished 
paper and plaster of an artificial globe? But beside all 
of the planet that any instrument can represent or 
parchment record, is there not a knowledge of art, not 
alone of form and color but what they mean to the 
mind ? Is it a misnomer to speak of a connoisseur y ov 
knower of pictures and statues, or of design in a sol- 
diers' monument, a temple, or tomb? Is there not 
knowledge in that capacity, deeper than the ear's 
curious chambers, by which deaf Beethoven listens to 
choirs in heaven for the musical .message and oracle of 
sound he must translate on earth? Is it stretching 
language to speak of a knowledge of the heart? The 
lover, in comparison with what his acquaintance reaches, 
justly counts all the metaphysics and mathematics but 
a court of the gentiles and porch unfit to live in. How 
much in nature cannot be reduced to tape-line, cubic 
contents, and avoirdupois weight, but transcends the 
multiplication-table, and makes an emblem of the shin- 
ing diagrams in the evening sky ! How genius always 
makes nature its ladder ! Says Michael Angelo : " My 
eyes greedy of beauty, and my soul of its salvation, 
have only this one virtue of contemplating noble forms 
in order to mount to heaven." Did he never get there 
on those painted rounds which are more real than Elijah's 
chariot of fire ? A noble woman, borne up-stairs to 
die, and playing with death as did Sir Thomas More 
when he took away his long beard from the executioner's 



DEITY. 73 

axe, said, "The ascension has begun." Was not her 
humor as good as a prayer ? A friend said to me of his 
wife, "Her last effort was a smile." In communion 
with God we ask nothing. When people die well, you 
ma}^ read the liturgy if you please, but there is nothing 
to pra}^ for ! When I saw, at a certain funeral, no 
coffin, earth having already gone to earth, every shutter 
open, and the sunshine streaming in on a cheerful com- 
pan}', while one could not tell whether to condole or 
congratulate on the vanishing of a saintly soul, I said, 
These people believe in God! Is knowledge only of cer- 
tain dimensions? The great Florentine sculptor says 
to his friend Marcile Ficin : "I see, by my thought, in 
thy face what I cannot relate in this life : the soul still 
clothed in flesh but already ascended to God." No 
artist's pride in his profession or pleasure in any 
accomplishment prompted him to vainglorious words. 
"Painting or sculpture, at my hand, cannot suffice to 
appease that divine love w^hich, in order to strain us to 
its embrace, holds open its two arms on the cross." 

We are told to wait for science to justify the idea of 
a God ; and material science can give us but a coroner's 
inquest over the dead. Another method that master- 
student used, whose marbles live while populations per- 
ish, and who hung the Sistine Chapel ceiling with shapes 
of such awful grace. " Let down to me, O Lord, that 
chain of faith which holds all celestial gifts." So spake 
no nominal saint, or servant of the Church or of the 
Pope, whom he dealt with on manly terms while he meted 
out justice alike to Paganism and Christendom with his 
canvas and stone. " Tried with good and bad fortune, 
I ask pardon of God to mj'self. Succor with thy supreme 



74 PRINCIPLES. 

pity me, so near to death, so far from thee ! " Did he, 
properly speaking, know nothing about it ? Such piet}' is 
the normal and only genuine knowledge of God. In it 
the object is conscious subject too. What and how much 
can 3'ou intellectually know of your friend or mate? 
Must you furnish statistics, make an inventory, and 
give a tabular statement of their traits? A rational 
judgment may tally with or wait on your feeling. But 
the essence of this knowledge is no computing of quan- 
tities or report of committees. It is direct and inalien- 
able property of love, any precise defining of which 
were laying it out in coffin and shroud. Certain dry 
dialecticians of sentiment remind us of the skeletons 
suspended by a string and turned around in the anat- 
omist's lecture-room. When they speak, we hearken 
to a rattling as in the valley of Jehoshaphat. We 
ask, ''Can these dry bones live?" Certainly a man 
reduced to his logical understanding, with only its 
quarters for the accommodation of truth, and without 
affection or adoration, is the chief augur of death. He 
seems continually engaged on an autopsy of himself. 
He whom you can define as three persons or subsisten- 
cies, or anywise put into 3'our arithmetic, is not the 
living God. We know ourselves and one another not 
b}^ distinction of number but by action and co-opera- 
tion ; and, beyond curiosit}^, co-efficiency with him is 
necessary to know God. 

Woman is supposed to have less understanding than 
her masculine mate. How does she know men better 
than they do each other? How does a woman discern 
a man's feeling ere he is quite aware of it himself; or 
how imagine a return, but that love, instead of being 



DEITY. 75 

blind, is a searching sagacity and the quickest wit ; and 
she has more of it, to even the scale against his argu- 
ment and stronger arm? I think it is not for lack of 
vision, if our sisters be deceived ; for witli one lifting 
of their lowl}' ej^es they look us through ! More loving, 
they need more love ; and they are more loyal too, and 
less able to imagine that love should ever cease. I 
have known men grow cold in friendship, but women 
never. Others ma}^ have found them fickle : the wit- 
ness of my experience is to a fealt}' in them which no 
time, absence, or discouragement could cool or change. 
My thanks to God are for relations with them in which 
is nothing to regret. B}^ members of my own sex I 
have sometimes been cheated, deserted, and deceived. 
The woman does not found her affection on facts. Is 
material information needed for a basis of the love of 
God? What did Jesus know of the round globe, the 
western hemisphere, geologic formations, starry sys- 
tems, ether, telegraph, telephone, phonograph, atoms, 
or orbs ? Yet who from all this has learned more than 
did he of Him? The sun is self-luminous, and love is 
self-intelligent. It gives no reason, being its own, and 
needs no justification, and is the best form of that 
knowledge of which it is the means and end. While 
lust blinds the parties to it, and makes victims of them 
both, love imparts that perception of its object with 
which, beyond any 13'nx or argus, it is born ; and such 
a sentiment for the human implies the divine. Can I 
love not only kith and kin and my own lovers, — which 
is but decent equivalent and scarce more than quits^ — 
but the man, too, by whom I am insulted, gazetted, and 
mahgned? 'Tis no accident or work of my will. To 



76 PRINCIPLES. 

no such miracle am I equal. It is a beam of the sun, 
a well from the soil, a balm on the wind. Amazon or 
Missouri must have a source ; and from a spring never 
fathomed must come this feeling that unselfs the soul, 
that flies to suck no flower, and runs to grind no grist, 
and contemplates no mortal issue, but rests in its ob- 
ject instead of coasting round it to come back. This 
feeling cannot make of what it seeks its instrument or 
tool. It inspires and uses us, and merges all separate 
selves into that self of nature we branch from, and of 
which space and time are but accidents and modes. It 
is the knowledge of God, and it is God himself in the 
human breast. From its personality we cannot part. 
Not three but all persons are in it. Impersonality is a 
husk, a negation, and a void. Who can live on denial, 
breathe in a vacuum, or feed with the swine? To be 
personal is to be positive, to draw and sustain. 

Once more, we know God so far as we know the 
truth, which is infinite, and of which all the exact sci- 
ences are but illustration and eff'ect. When Geoffry 
St. Hilaire, Oken, Cuvier, Agassiz, and Darwin detect 
in the lowest creature the organism of the highest, or 
when we speak of correlation of life and force, can the 
Correlator be left out? Radical thinkers would substi- 
tute truth as the object instead of God. But truth is 
only one of his names, and we know as much of him as 
of it. There are things the angels desire to look into, 
but will never find out all ; and there were no truth 
or God if they could ! But if truth be a relation, 
unsearchable in its beginning or end, then God is our 
relation, and only by loving all our relations we come 
to know him and them. What were the earth but a 



DEITY. 77 

receiving- tomb, if the millions of our race, if martyrs 
and confessors, in sore extremit}" have groaned out 
their spirits ignorant of him b}' whom they were re- 
freshed or in whose cause the}' gave their life ; the 
generations but withering leaves, melting snow-flakes, 
or stiffening flies, with no appeal to heaven which 
the deaf and dumb firmament did not mock, while we 
their descendants in these lees of time and ends of the 
earth still wait, as for an experiment in chemistry', for 
our ingenious logicians to demonstrate the being we 
may trust ; but, till the evidence is all in to establish 
the divinity or explode it, the bench of science with 
judicial decree must say down^ down to all aspira- 
tion, look for comfort, faith of Socrates, or praj'er of 
Christ ! There must be some other than this dismal way. 
Expert law^'ers admit no truth but such as can manage 
to get through the corkscrew of their cross-question. 
But it shines in at every window, and rides on every ray 
which cannot be too small to be the chariot of a god. 

Yet again, so far as we know beaut}' we know God ; 
and do we not know it in nature and those human fea- 
tures from which it beams more than in the landscape ? 
But of beauty no science can be the picture-frame, talk 
learnedly as we will of its laws. The strokes are too 
broad, the form and color too vast and nice, the scale 
too extended on rounds of land and sea and sky, the 
touches in flesh too fine, and the reaching to our sensi- 
bility too soft and various, — from a sunrise to the dawn 
of expression on a human face, — for any verbal propo- 
sitions to contain. One may make a patient and faith- 
ful sketch ; but in laying on the color is a moment of 
ecstasy. Just how he does it the artist cannot tell. By 



78 PRINCIPLES. 

some live beauty of holiness he comes into half-uncon- 
scious knowledge of being helped. We say an orator 
or preacher is assisted when he surpasses himself. " Un- 
less above himself he can erect himself, how poor a 
thing " is the artist as well as the man ! 

We know God, but not all about him. Do we know 
all about each other, or our situation on this rolling ball, 
touching but at points the spheres of our neighbors, as 
we sail in an offing away from the secret of our own 
breasts? Do we know all about a blade of grass, that 
far-off cousin of the sun and blood relation of the rain ? 
Huxley and Tyndall are no more aware than we of the 
ultimate ph3^siology of the automatic frog or undulation 
of the light the}' so curiously dissect and trace. If in 
no demonstration or intuition, yet in some intimation, 
we know dut}^ and immortality. So we know God. 

Furthermore, I know m}'- dut}', and for an3^body 
to doubt my knowledge of it were the last insult. 
But how? Not by science, but co?2science. Yet I 
know it as well and somewhat more dearly and deeply 
than I do the composition of air or water or the 
constitution — which science makes such proud poth- 
er about — of the sun. Is not obligation revealed 
as clearly as an acid or alkali, or as the solar light 
divides in the spectroscope the metallic lines? Ac- 
cording to Immanuel Kant, it reveals an ohliger too. 
Faraday served God by turns in his oratory and lab- 
oratory, not confounding their offices, as he said. 
There are diverse theories how and by what incre- 
ments grows this crystal or diamond of conscience by 
which all the paste of compromise or glass of conven- 
ient expediency is cut. But nothing conceivable is finer 



DEITY. 79 

than its final edge. God, duty, and immortality are 
all of them intimations^ and we have their proof in 
their possession. Love and beauty answer everj^ ques- 
tion of their own reality or eternit}'. But, before they 
can be preached as doctrines, they must be experienced 
as facts. We cannot believe these points till thej^ are 
produced as lines in our conscious purpose and faithful 
deeds. But their evidence is in their recurrence, period- 
ical as the planets, inextinguishable as the morning and 
the evening star. In den3'ing such knowledge the can- 
did and profound Mr. Spencer already' knows too much. 
Wh}^ does he sa}" so much about the unknowable, and 
qualify it with the definite article, and regard it as the 
background of all observation, substance of what is 
manifest and fountain of that law which Hooker calls 
the bosom of God ? Why make it worth}^ of a capital 
letter, like Him^ a plan from which all order is designed 
and pigment of which all nature is paint, if, after as- 
cribing to it such qualities and powers he is to deny that 
aught of it can be known, and make the universe stop 
bolt upright'in man with but a precipice over which into 
an abyss of nothingness he is to plunge? When, in an 
educational convention, a long generation ago, some 
gentleman from the South expressed his pleasure that 
to the subject of slaver}^ no allusion had been made, 
Horace Mann replied that the honorable member of 
that bod}' had alread}' said too much ! If the unknow- 
able so contradict itself as to have all these mighty 
attributes which its affirmers so innocentl}' assume, it 
is high time, and the only safety for them, to resign 
their professors' chairs, and lecture no longer on this 
particular subject, but be quite still and let it alone ; 



80 PRINCIPLES. 

for never did the Scotch proverb, " Least said is soon- 
est mended," better apply. If 3'ou say something is un- 
knowable, we ask what; and, if 3'ou know what, then 
'tis unknowable no more. '^ What do I know? " asked 
Montaigne. " What do you know? " inquired Socrates. 
We know nothing complete^. But if we know an}' 
thing, it is the image wa were made in, and have no 
name for but God. 

It is a case for testimony of such as, like Jesus, say 
they have known God, and b}^ their witness have moved 
the world more than all discoursers on the elements, 
from Lucretius down. Why should not saints and 
seers and experts in piet}^, at the tribunal which is to 
pass on the facts in this court of knowledge, be heard 
as well as observers of equinoctial precessions and 
planetary conjunctions, of a transit or an eclipse? 
There are other transits than of Venus, different con- 
junctions more truly celestial, but no eclipse of God. 
*' True science," saith the poet, " is the reading of his 
name." Is it not on record that the most convinced of 
heavenly things have been the keenest discerners of 
earthly ones ? — such as Swedenborg, equall}'' at home 
among facts and spirits ; Linnaeus, father of botan}', who, 
like Moses, saw the Sempiternal Omnipotent passing by^ 
as his garments rustled their skirts ; and William Blake, 
most ideal of English painters, who conversed with 
the apostle Paul, and although ill-treated and meanly 
lodged on earth, knew, as he told his visitors, the Lord 
had a splendid palace for him to enter by and hy. Her- 
der, the spiritual naturalist, was found dead at his desk, 
the hand which had just been writing cold and stiff. 
On examining the paper, his friends perused these lines : 



DEITY. 81 

" Transported into new regions, I cast around me an 
inspired look. I see the world reflecting the glory of 
the Sublime Being who has created it. The heaven 
seems a tabernacle of the Eternal. My feeble intelli- 
gence, bent to the dust, unable to sustain the spectacle 
of these august wonders, arrests and hushes itself, stops 
and is still." Did the intelligence stop with the pulse? 

Faith is the pioneer and main constituent of knowl- 
edge. Said an artist : "I am going to treat that sub- 
ject better than it was ever handled before : I know I 
shall not, but I believe I shall." Doubtless his panel 
held the record of his belief; for there is an upper as 
well as under-standing, an observatory- to gaze from as 
well as a house-window or ship's deck. When I saw 
how riding through Boston on a car- top gave me, by 
opening ever}' 3-ard and attic, a new city, I had a lesson 
on the importance of elevation of view. 

We are getting better ideas of God. As Agassiz 
found the stakes he drove into the glaciers changing 
their place, so the old dogmatic heaps steadily advance 
to melt as they are exposed to the sun. But justice will 
never be outgrown or left behind. In Bulgaria, a thou- 
sand years ago. King Bogaris inquired of Methodius, a 
Christian monk who was an artist, ' ' Hast thou an}- pic- 
ture to rival those of the terrible deeds of m}' men with 
which m}' galleries are filled? " The painter answered, 
' ' I will show 3^ou the event most dire a creature's eye 
shall ever behold," and he uncovered his canvas of the 
" Last Judo'ment." This •missionarv with his brush con- 
verted the pagan monarch and all his subjects, and the 
seed was planted of the church which now in a death-grip 
closes with the Mohammedan faith. Not long ago hun- 



82 PRINCIPLES. 

dreds of Greek Christians in the presence of Turkish offi- 
cials were cut down for refusing to recant. "Infidel," so 
each one was addressed, "wilt thou save th}^ soul by fol- 
lowing God and the prophet ? " " No ! " answered the mar- 
t>T, and at the word his head dropped under the sword. 
To one youth, whose beaut}^ pleased the executioners, 
the question was put thrice ; and the reply was, "By God's 
help, never ! " tiU he too fell under the fatal blow. Had 
he no knowledge of that to which he appealed ? We have 
gauges and meters for light and heat and rain. Earth, 
sea, or air has no unfathomable depth. But what quick- 
silver -or spirit-tube, what deep-sea line or astronomic 
reckoning, has told to what degrees piety ma^'' attain? 
What opportunity of temptation or charming attraction 
could find, in Joseph's or in St. Anthony's purity, a shal- 
low point or possible end? I knov7 a poet who sa^'s, 
the wave-washed crags shall be flown away with on the 
wings of time, but love shall outlast such transitory 
things. Only b}' experience of love could the poet be 
taught. " It is well," said James Walker, "to speculate 
about praj^er, but how much better to pray ! " I imagine 
that, as Daniel Webster told the farmers they would 
learn more from conversation than from books, so one 
real address to our Author is more instructive than 
much metaphysical reading. Some students in college 
said that the professor talked about electricity, but 
never gave them a chance to feel the electric shock ! I 
appreciate the argument for Deity from necessary ideas 
or actual works ; but I do not reason when a sense of 
his being touches me, and his beauty and benignity fiU 
with jo^'ful assurance the channels whose emptiness 
alone is my doubt and fear. When I saw the ocean's 



DEITY. 83 

inlet up to the brown hills and woodland brooks swell 
with the rising tide ; when the wind of the spirit, like the 
south breeze on the fainting flowers, listed to revive me 
out of all my discouragement and grief, — I cared not 
for other demonstration, more than for proof that my 
helpmate was alive b}^ mj^ side. There ma}' be a con- 
genital incapacity for communing with God. In favor of 
the second commandment Charles Sumner would wipe 
out the first ; but without the first, in the long run the 
second would fare hard. Abou Ben Adhem's curiosity 
to know if he were among the Lord's lovers was no sin ; 
and the love of fellow-men would not last if from 
no height of worship its stream should fall. The say- 
ing travels concerning certain famous English writers, 
" Three positivists and no God." But how find him? 

I find him, first, in his name. Is it answered that is 
only a word? But what are words? People do not 
forge and utter words as the}' please. They cannot be 
made or unmade by the votes of assemblies or edicts of 
kings. They are chronic. They come into existence 
by a law of nature. They are carved out of unstable 
air by a supernatural power. To call God's word or 
name "priestcraft" is itself cant. A set of priests 
could no more have created it than they could an ocean 
or a mountain-range. Duty is twin with adoration, and 
without its nurse of devotion pines and droops. 

" The stars shine not in their houses. 
But o'er the pinnacles of thine," 

writes the poet to his mistress, making the celestial 
posts stations and sentry-boxes for what he loves. His 
figure, in the way of knowledge, is worth all the astron- 



84 PRINCIPLES. 

omy through the confounding stretch of constellations 
which Mr. Proctor describes. 

" The hosts of God encamp around 
The dwellings of the just." 

If not, what is their use ? There might as well be no 
hosts ! ' T is the only standing army I respect. "The 
glimpses of the moon " were none too big a candle to 
show to a son his father's ghost. Leave the heart's 
meaning out, and there were no loss in folding the heav- 
ens as a vesture or rolling them together as a scroll. 
"If there be gods, 'tis pleasant to die; if none, it is 
not pleasant to live : " for who then would care how 
soon this farce of matter were played out and the tent 
of the universe struck? Matthew Arnold ssijs, "God 
means the Brilliant in the sky." But what makes it to 
shine and to wear the blue firmament for a robe ? There 
could have been no name if no Lord, — as no names for 
plant, beast, earth, sea, but that these things were, and to 
do aught in his name is to do it by his strength and for 
his honor. "After all, God bless 3'ou," I said to a 
good-natured atheist, as we parted ; and he rejoined witii 
a smile, " I know what 3'ou mean! " If tliere be no 
God, where did he get his title ? Who performed the 
baptismal service for him, and at what font did he 
stand? Caesar may be a myth, and Eve in the garden 
a tale, but no appellations can overrate the Eternal. 

Secondly, I find him in his work : what he does, shows 
what he is. All the phrases which sceptics think so 
lightl}' of, concerning him, are but the labels of his won- 
ders. " But all the Bibles," says the denier, " are hu- 
man compositions written in time : show me sacred books 



DEITY. 85 

that existed before the men did, I will admit they were 
from God ! " But did the penmen indeed originate the 
subject of their books? Was not their stint set? We 
do not affirm a God out of us. What is out of us is 
not so eas}"^ to say. The whole creation is somehow 
in our thought. I have a feeling that fetches down 
Orion. I draw him to me b}^ a thread of light. My 
imagination girdles the Pleiades. Sirius, that more 
magnificent sun, a thousand million miles away, minds 
my arithmetic, revolves in the space of m}- bosom, 
quivers, and pours out volcanic floods of light as my 
little telescope includes him within the walls of my 
throbbing clay. God is not less because to me he ex- 
ists not externally but in the consciousness of my own 
bosom, and I cannot dismiss my guest. If no charac- 
ters by him were ever entered on a paper leaf, stone 
tablet from Sinai, or Egyptian column, do we not find 
his engraving in living organisms and on the vast layers 
of the globe ? 

Providence is one of these obstinate, indestructible 
words in the dail^^ discourse of mankind, — whether gen- 
eral or particular, the schools dispute. But a great, 
forthreaching, unbaffled, and unending plan, a purpose 
through the ages, one must be worse than color-blind 
not to see, with a stead}^ accomplishment, — style it 
fitness, adjustment, design, as 3'ou will. But " a power 
that makes for righteousness" must know what it is 
about. Can a sightless archer every time hit the mark ? 
Could that expert shooter who cracks a glass ball with 
a lead one in the air, rarel}" missing his aim, perform 
such a feat without an eye ? But does not Providence 
miss? To our partial vision so it may sometimes 



86 PRINCIPLES. 

seem. But when we look at the target and know the 
object, we find the centre touched. It is only because 
we assume an intent to make virtue alwa3's happy — as 
a cheap novel ends with a successful match — that we 
question if there be a Providence at all. If our being 
and position, however, on the whole be not a boon, we 
could not find God in any testimony of other folk. Na- 
ture must show him before I can accept him on that 
great hearsa}^ of the Bible ; and famous names of psalm- 
ist and seer, heading the list, cannot settle the matter, 
unless the answer of experience indorse the verbal God. 
In addition to the creeds, which are other peoj^le's de- 
posits, I must have funds of my own. Would any poet's 
description suflfice to me for nature's charms ? Must I 
not find true his inventory or memorandum of the beauty 
that has been my bath as I gazed at the grass and 
flowers, climbed the hills, heard the gurgle of the brooks, 
felt under my boat the lift of the seas, and surve3'ed 
through mj^ lens or window the procession of the stars ? 
So, unless God be my personal acquaintance, antique 
letter and solemn sacrament are in vain. Does he in- 
habit a dedicated house, sanctify a seventh da,j, become 
incarnate in one human form, enter the communicant's 
digestion in a consecrated crumb of bread and drop of 
wine, appear in a picture or carved crucifix? Can we 
touch him in holy water, smell him in altar incense, 
hear him in a collect for the Supper or High Mass, and 
behold him in the elevation of the Host? Must I wor- 
ship him in an only- begotten Son, a Virgin mother, or 
an immaculate Mary's mother, in the canonical saints, 
ministering priest, or infallible pope? No, not so only : 
my body, too, is a temple of the Holy Ghost ; and the 
universe is no refuge for foundlings save a few elect. 



DEITY. 87 

God had no partialit}^ for Jesus ; through what an 
unsparing school that Captain of our Salvation was put ! 
The Most High has no cabinet. Not a nook of nature 
but is his workshop, not an event without his proced- 
ure. Persian sun-worshipper, Buddhist self-anihila- 
tor, Egyptian pjramid-embalmer, Mohammedan saint, 
Red-man sacrificing to the great spirit, or Ethiopia out- 
stretching her hand in praj'er, is as dear to him as 
lowly Christian or devout Jew, as a martyr Stephen or 
Nathanael without guile. As all lands are woven to- 
gether by the cables and wires that thread the air or 
undergird the sea, so every communication of Deity 
to which I accord significance must terminate in my- 
self, and I must feel of ever}' message the tingling 
touch. Perhaps I can be so at home in another's heart 
as to feel it there ! To live in the heart, which we can- 
not live without, is love ! Lovers, saj's Shakspeare, 
like Ferdinand and Miranda, change eyes^ each looking 
with the other's sight; and I suppose sj'mpathy can be 
so intense that the friend's state of mind passes more 
swiftly than a flash and becomes ours. Hence a fellow- 
ship removing all individual bounds ; and on this rock 
is built the spiritual church. Communion of saints is the 
life-boat that cannot be swamped in the materialistic 
sea. 

Thus, thirdl}", I saj^ we find God not onl}- in his name, 
and his work which gives him his name, but in his nature 
or image. Had he left no sign-manual of his authorship 
in our frame, all else were to us a dumb show. AVh}' do 
beasts and insects not perceive the drift of the plot on 
this broad external stage? Because, even in their inno- 
cence, they cannot yet come to themselves, and in them- 
selves find their Father. 



88 PRINCIPLES. 

But what features of his face are unveiled to us? 
First, of sincerity, the open look. Wh}' can we not be 
free from this candid bond, but that the Divinity reveals 
within us his essence of truth, as a claim be3'ond con- 
venience or uses of the hour, so infinite that no liar can 
be content till he has confessed ? After what long and 
stubborn perjury, from at last being convinced by some 
co-conspirator that falsehood is kindest and best, a 
quickened conscience forces the wretched deceiver, man 
or woman, in mutual crime, to own at last even the for- 
swearing, and throw off the disguise that hinders peace 
with God ! The very clothing of the soul is on fire to 
burn and consume while it persists in untruth ! Next, 
the line of rectitude in this countenance we pray God 
to lift upon us, and which he never quite withdraws. 
Truth is right speech, and righteousness is true conduct. 
If your neighbor will not rest in any wrong 3'ou do him, 
you will be the last to be satisfied with 3'our own unfair- 
ness, because Deit^^ is equit}^ in 3'our vital parts. There 
is one more lineament in that face whose glance we can- 
not escape ; it is goodness. But the goodness must be 
more than doting on one person, however winsome and 
dear. I know an earnest love ; but God save me from 
an exclusive one, and keep me from wishing or enduring 
the monopoly of a human heart ! We ma3^ be partial to 
one person, like the sun flattering some mountain- top 
or blazing back from some windowed tower as he rises 
or sets ; but be we also impartial as the sun, making 
the whole earth his reflection and flinging his radiance 
through the sky. The most devoted particular afl'ec- 
tion can be but one direction of the ra3'S that embrace 
all our fellows and find no limit in any border of the 



DEITY. 89 

world. The obligation of this triune truth, justice, 
and love hints the divinity without which it could not 
exist. 

Is there deformit}^ in nature ? Nature's over-abound- 
ing beaut}' makes the apparent deformit}^ its foil. Is 
there ugliness in human nature? " The beauty of holi- 
ness " offsets and chases it awa}' as a sea-fog or flitting 
cloud. We ma}' know what progress a man has made 
by the importance of Satan in his creed. If the devil 
have a large place, the man is low down in the valley 
where all the depravities cluster and flock. As the man 
rises, the demons flee. As he unfolds, they disap- 
pear. God does not recognize them, nor do they exist 
to him. 

Once more we find God in the healthful exercise of 
our powers, not in one faculty of reverence, but in all 
our labor and study and human service, as much as in 
the order of the sanctuar}^ or a grace at table, or in mus- 
ing, like David's, on our bed, or Isaac's meditation at 
eventide. AYe find him in innocent pleasures as in sol- 
emn forms, as parents are as much pleased with their 
children's gambols as with their deferential requests. 
The little orthodox bo}', repeating his pra3'ers so punc- 
tually in his countr}' cot, said one morning, " Good-by, 
God ! I am going to Boston to stay a fortnight ; " he 
not having been taught how that sublime Presence would 
smile on him amid all the sights of the city as when the 
soul was commended to him in sleep. The small girl 
was pious in a more rational way, who, going home from 
her first dance, ere she put off her pretty dress, fell 
on her knees to thank God for the pleasure he had given 
her at the children's ball. 



90 PRINCIPLES. 

We expect to find God in a future state, which we 
await patiently. 

" In this close body pent, 
Absent from thee I roam." 

But we may not expect to see him in heaven quite oth- 
erwise than on earth. As these outward heavens have 
a like constitution with the material earth, in whose 
dark bowels below are the same metals which the spec- 
troscope detects in the rays of the sun, so true celestial 
or terrestrial life and happiness agree. We have been 
admonished by the preacher, in view of eternity, to 
despise and postpone the passing hour. 

*' The present moment flies, 
And bears our life away." 

But the present of a man is not like that of a beast. It 
is not limited to the tick of the clock, or imprisoned in 
walls of space. It is made up of memory and hope. 
It is the focus of yesterda}' and to-morrow, of a thou- 
sand experiences and anticipations. A cultivated man 
is like the chronometer, constructed to measure months 
and years as well as seconds of time ; or like the dial, 
the shadow of whose gnomon cuts by degrees the whole 
circle of light. Ever}^ instant act or immediate enter- 
prise is characterized by what wide contemplation ! 
The e3'es of Abraham or of Abraham Lincoln stop not 
with the object before them, but have a far-awa}^ look 
at country and posterit}^, at what is past and to come. 
The soldier for libertj^ and native land thinks less of the 
blow he gives or takes than of the issue of the fight. 
Satan is not the god even of this world more than of 
that to come. But for the true God, the world, in all 



DEITY. 91 

its parts and ongoings, were a house without a builder, 
a train without a conductor, a procession without a liead, 
a sepulchre and not a home, or an asj'him for orphans 
instead of one mansion in a larger house. To a gloomy 
theology its fabric looks like a vast block which disaster 
or disease has emptied, and which is not haunted even, 
though it may have " To let" hanging over its doors. 

What was that hereafter we call heaven invented for 
but for love to live in, — the shrine of its pilgrimage, 
the altar for renewal of its vows, the opportunity for 
fresh greeting, with room for everlasting accommodation ? 
What promissory note so good as God's writing on our 
heart of this hope ! " Ye are our epistle," says Paul to 
his Corinthian converts. Nay, we are God's epistle, 
and what he has inscribed on these fleshl}' tables he will 
answer, and never deny his responsibility for the instru- 
ment he has drawn. Science is a witness of his work ; 
but love is a voucher for Ms purpose. Science deals 
with the successions and transformations of matter, and 
never goes bej'ond what has a beginning and end ; but 
love declares it was before the world's foundation, and 
shall be after its end. It is the fire itself, and not that 
which is or can be consumed. It is God in us. It is 
the soul of honor and virtue. Policy of what is for our 
advantage may in smooth sailing keep us straight ; but, 
storm-tried, what stately reputations, with all their 
streamers of fame and influence, go down ! Yet, as no 
drouth can drink up the fountains, nor frost quench the 
flames, nor sirocco burn the atmosphere, nor C3'clone 
reach to the stars or overset the hills, so there is, even 
in these tabernacles, a worth in wliich whoso finds God 
cannot lose his own soul. 



92 PRINCIPLES. 

In doctrine one may be materialist, but not in prac- 
tice. Things do not fill any mind in proportion to their 
qualities of weight, color, or size. Does the big globe 
occupy any such room on your premises as the little fig- 
ure of 3'our companion or friend ? One house may take 
up more space than the street or continent. A soldier 
who fought for liberty and native land said he would 
not shed a drop of his wife's blood, even for his country. 
What horror arose on the proposition to save the old 
slave Union b}' sending brother or mother into bondage ! 
How we pack the annals, geologic or historic, of the 
earth, into a corner of our brain ! How a passion for 
one man or woman will sweep the board, wipe the slate, 
break down all partitions betwixt heart and head, and 
penetrate our being to its roots ! See the lovers, tinge- 
ing all nature with their thought, seeking the lonely 
path, the high tower, deep wood, or desert shore, that 
they may not be disturbed by alien subjects or other 
forms ! By what profound topic or knotty question 
could they be so absorbed? Are they interested in 
science or art? Surely not on Newton's gravitation, or 
Darwin's selection, or any picture of Titian or Tinto- 
retto, are they engaged ! A theme for argument, a 
great aff'air, would divert them from each other and 
from their track ; and any trifle is enough to give vent 
to the feeling it is so painful for them to suppress, as a 
little wire discharges the thunder-cloud. 

Men have many interiors, and in storing their apart- 
ments make many mistakes. With some, pleasure only 
is admitted, till happiness is destroyed. With more, 
business is supreme tenant, driving all others out ; and 
when the capacity or opportunity for that fails, how the 



DEITY. 93 

man of native strength, having no love of beauty, or 
taste for societ}'^, or relish for books, or affectionate en- 
jo3'ment even of his home, flounders like a stranded 
whale, empt}' of comfort in his age, the eye now lack- 
lustre that was once so keen at a bargain, and at last 
gazing fixedlj^ and sourl}" at the death wiiich is the onlj"- 
refuge from a miserable life ! Can the mind be a ware- 
house, with no attic or garret even to entertain the 
idea of a God? Shall the atheist answer. It is a super- 
stition which science has outgrown? I wdll rejoin, 
Large as his sensible understanding maj^be, his unbelief 
is a vacuit}' in his own head ! Like one in w^hom some 
bodil}^ member or organ is wanting, he has not the 
usual equipment and outfit. AVith the propagandist of 
scepticism I find no fault ; only I find him empty, and 
cannot feel anger, but only pity for his defect. By 
congenital want or artificial mutilation one entire side 
of his proper nature has been lopped off" or left out. All 
men and nations are not in error, while he, with his 
handful of fellow-deniers of spirit and devotees of the 
clod, is sound and right. Destitution is of divers sorts. 
It is bad enough to be short of an e^'e, hand, or foot, 
to be deaf to music, or color-blind. But all else is a 
slight privation compared with the lack in the human 
bosom of a sense of the divine. 

Well guarded by conscience as one may be, his 
morality is at risk if not backed with responsibility to 
an unquestionable witness and infallible judge. What 
trustworthiness is there in a moral sense that has no 
root ? If I cannot tap for my refreshment the resources 
of an infinite strength, temptation may increase till all 
worldly motives and restraints give way ; and tempta- 



94 PRINCIPLES. 

tion, as the novelist-preacher Thackeray tells us, is om- 
nipresent in wilderness and town. " It is an obsequious 
servant, that has no objection to the country," and pur- 
sues us into the most inaccessible retreats. 

Certainly an idea of God cannot be arbitrarily im- 
posed. Our respect is summoned to all the results of 
free thought, although the elimination of Deity should 
be one. But when thought commits suicide, and 
starves itself by disowning the breast it is nursed at 
and cannot be weaned from, the death is no ground 
of jubilee. The obsequies are sad. If no one thought 
of me, how could I be? If I am accident, and the 
gods save in fancy do not exist, then I do not wish 
even to think, and am ready for my decease. Fetch 
straightway my coffin and my shroud ! 

Whether Deity be personal or impersonal is a ques- 
tion whose solution in any way cancels not the inward 
sense. His personahty is not ours raised to the highest 
power, but ours is his reduced to the lowest terms. 

Surely he will reach us in some waj^ If the calm 
fails to persuade us of his presence, the demonstration 
will be completed by the storm, as when the steamer 
and the iceberg meet. Some neighbors met a year 
ago to talk of horses and cattle in a country-barn. 
The tempest had been up all night and all day, like 
a moving and bursting water-spout, which seemed at 
last, having turned the roads into rivers and the plains 
into ponds, to have spent all its store. But from a 
little reserve or remnant of cloud which the horizon sent 
up swiftly like a " Monitor " with its hidden batter}^, fell 
a sudden bolt to wrench out the corner of the building, 
and in a moment set its contents on fire, bringing all 



DEITY. 95 

in it with the shock to their knees, and scarce failing to 
crush them to the ground. What is this business-firm 
and. partnership and executive department of the light- 
ning and the fire ? Light as a feather and buo3'ant as 
a balloon seems the cloud out of which the electricity 
" slips so smoothly that a sense of beaut}' mingles with 
our fear." But where lurks the potentiality which no 
heavy enginery can match, and what is the quality of 
force whose quantity might not spill over the hollow 
of our hand, but which, when hurled from the Divine 
finger, rends mortise and masonry apart? If it be a 
lever, where is the fulcrum? if a hammer, what is the 
hold? if a chisel, how is it whet? and if it be mother 
of all the mechanical powers, who ever saw the terri- 
ble womb that perpetuall}' brings it forth ? "In thun- 
der and lightning and rain," the structure these men were 
in, an awful bonfire, shrivelled and crumbled, its beams 
and rafters for a while a blazing web in the air, and 
then dissolved in smoke. The human and animal crea- 
tures were one tumultuous group on the greensward 
that steamed with the heat, all of them feeling alike the 
resistless swa}^ A heap of red cinders, soon turning 
to damp gra}^ ashes, remained, while the fl3'ing artillery 
of the air, like a white wreath of vapor, rolled on with 
concealed yet resounding wheels to strike elsewhere 
again. But earth and skj- are righted by what leaps at 
once from both ! It is the quiver on the shoulders of 
the Most High ; and they on whom the bow has been 
once drawn covet not the launching of another shaft. In 
the flash and stroke together is ' ' the vision of sudden 
death." Jupiter tonans the Deity was called by the 
Greeks, and in Hebrew poetry "the Lord thundereth 



96 PRINCIPLES. 

marvellously with his voice." But when on the fury 
and the noise rises the morning-star, serene as if 
nothing had occurred, comes the chief impression of 
strength. The elemental strife is but a " dreadful 
pother ; " but the quiet order is an unfathomable deep ; 
and in the soul is an energy, akin to its Author's, which 
no clamor of land or sea or sky can overcrow. How 
lightl}" and at once, like ants busil}^ restoring their sand- 
hills on the track, the human creatures rear out of 
ashes their ruined abodes, and plan new and greater 
barns where they may bestow all their fruits and their 
goods ! 

But while the old unfathomable energy'- lasts, and 
defies alike our comprehension and our gauge, the wor- 
ship of the race can never be uprooted by any doubt. 
No axe can be laid at the root of this tree ; for the 
treasures of the wind and rain and hail have not run 
out. The banker in this institution can always resume ! 
His notes may be issued on long credit, but they are 
paid punctually and are never overdue. The blinding 
bolt is not itself blind which fetches us in prayer to 
our perhaps unused and forgotten knees ; and " prayer 
without ceasing," signified or not by anj^ bodily attitude, 
is the true posture of the mind. Till God goes into 
bankruptcy and the heavens fail, we shall depend on 
and draw from what was never put to our credit in any 
vault or iron safe. " Thanks and use," Shakspeare 
adds to Christ's admonitions and to David's psalms. 

Scientists speculate and practical men talk as if 
there were in some cj'cle of time a slackening at na- 
ture's forge, the snows not so deep, or summer da^'S 
BO warm, or tides so high as before. But the axle 



DEITY. 97 

turns, and lo, the dog- star again rages, the coast is 
once more submerged, the thick winter-fleece clothes 
the earth, and all precedents are surpassed, to spoil 
memor}', confound calculation, and cover us with con- 
fusion, till, in another lull of nature, as if to take 
breath, the deficits and queries return. But adoration, 
like ever}'- sentiment, will not miss its food. 

No philosoph}' of materialism or mocking temper can 
overcome faith. The scorner, as with a jet of water, 
ma}' put out the jet of flame in his talk, or fling a vitriol 
which burns and gives no light. The divine influence, 
as well as human love, is shut off by contempt. How 
easil}' we can think of men whose genius has been hin- 
dered bj' the smartness of their wit ! "A haught}' spirit 
goes before a fall " in our intellect no less than in our 
lot. Rabelais, whose learning was matched by his acute- 
ness alone, seeing in all things a ludicrous side, and 
making a coarse jest of that womanhood which is the 
chief revelation of Deity to ever}- true man, when he 
expired, could onl}' say, "Draw the curtain, the farce 
is played out ; " and when he received extreme unction, 
he remarked that they had greased his boots for the 
great journey, and that he went to seek the grand Per- 
haps^ while he made a pun on the robe put on him for 
the last agon}^, as he declared, "Blessed are they who 
die in Domino ! " He sat in the seat of the scornful. 

But how credulous is such an unbelieving man ! What 
astonishing credit he gives to the theory that there is a 
fate to baffle all human desire, and that the world is but 
a big apple of Sodom for its inhabitants to eat ! Only 
by incredulit}', running to the extreme, can we question 
that this spectacle, so vast and fan*, this splendid frame 

7 



98 PRINCIPLES. 

for the human picture, means only vanity and death. It 
is a confidence overweening, indeed, that, after a little 
playing and short ciphering, the board is to be swept 
and the slate wiped, and that this whole humanity is but 
a series and succession of forms trj^ing in vain to get their 
chins above the flood. What an inanimate phantasmago- 
ria were the creation ; what a dark lantern the Creator 
must carry, and with phosphoric displa}' of false fire 
write on the wall, or cast figures for a moment's amuse- 
ment on this screen of time, with but unreahty before 
it or behind! "We are but empty shadows," will 
the preacher say? If there be in us no substance, 
then there is no substance at all. We can onl}^ behold 
through our idea, as by his telescope the astronomer 
beholds a star ; and if his instrument be incorrect, it is 
not a constellation but straw-spangle he beholds. 

What God is, who shall say? When the far-off 
beckons us, as we sit on the hillside or by the shore, 
and the inmost in us impels us to go, is not the pros- 
pect and the impulse too Himself ? When we regret 
our deed or decision, and should lament the opposite 
had that been made or done instead, what causes us to 
waver, but this Infinite Being, which is content with no 
definite and arrested result? I do not know who God 
is ; but I do not know any more who I am ! He is no 
greater mystery to me than I to myself. The objection 
that I cannot sound or comprehend the existence I 
affirm, applies to that of every creature that breathes. 

An argument especiall}' for faith is its contribution to 
life. How we live on each other, and how distrust 
plants the seeds of disease ! Withdrawn confidence 
weakens us centrally, like taking away fit soil from a 



DEITY. 99 

plant or loam from an apple-tree, food from a beast, or 
lime from our own bones : and then sickness, in what- 
ever shape of diphtheria, meningitis, or consumption, 
seizes on the frame thus laid open to its attack. One's 
constitutional malad}' we may call it ; but want of kind- 
ness will be a malady in an}" constitution ! We smile 
at one's dying of disappointed love, and perhaps any 
single rejected affection is seldom fatal to life. But we 
shall very surel}', if not quickly, die of not being loved 
at all ; and this should be the post mortem record in how 
many a case ! If the guest be not welcome in the 
compan}^ he will leave the room at an early hour. If 
nobody wants me here, I am ready to depart ! Aban- 
doned woman^ we sa}' : by whom among men? The sin 
against her, if the expression be correct, is greater than 
she can have committed herself. Said the Bethel min- 
ister, of an incorrigible transgressor, ' ' He is an expen- 
sive machine, but 1 will never give him up." Let us not 
give each other up, by all our hope of not being given 
up b}^ God ! 

Faith in him is indeed more indispensable than in 
each other ; for it is the essence of life. How often the 
thought of him is the only resort ! Who has not known 
some woman of superior gifts and graces, 3'et without 
companionship, or only a partner that was a cross on 
which she was crucified bod}" and soul, with none but 
the Unseen for the mate of her mind ? Yet in that com- 
munion she could have peace and joy. Are such sub- 
lime issues from an imaginary source ? We go to it 
empty and come away full. Goethe is not accounted 
religious in the church, yet he portrays in the "Fair 
Saint " or " Beautiful Soul " one whose petitions never 
failed of reply. 



100 PRINCIPLES. 

In the divine justice is our escape from human wrong. 
There are chambers of the Inquisition which CathoKc 
Spain never opened, and in which no German conclave 
ever met, to which we are summoned by those ever ready 
to touch what is painful and make the unpleasant remark. 
The thumb-screw and iron boot have gone out of fash- 
ion, but how the wedge of more refined torture is driven 
by domestic examination that does not spare ! ' ' When 
I see a certain person coming to console me for the 
death of my child, I want," said a bereft mother, "to 
run away." Let us thank Him to whom we can always 
run! 

God is the problem whose last and clearest solution is 
in the corollary of duty, which, as Kant says, is the 
practical reason piecing out the ladder to climb to him 
where the speculative ends. In this transparency of con- 
science all the vexing riddles conclude. With a dogged 
satisfaction, in dire extremity, it helps us to stand at 
our post and do our office, as the old " Cumberland " still 
fired her guns when sinking to her gunwale. There was 
something in those sailors, as in all faithful unto death, 
not going down ! 

For the being of God it is the custom to use diverse 
arguments, one from necessar}' ideas, the other from 
design. Let us take from beauty a third. It is not 
strange that men should find it difficult to believe in a 
living goodness who are insensible to natural charms. 
Emile Gebhart sajs that Habelais had a feeling of moral 
truth and beauty, but the grand poetry of visible things 
never awoke in that doubter's heart. Lake Leman and 
Mont Blanc could not touch with one tone of softer color 
Calvin's terrible style ; no wonder he made such a hard 



DEITY. 101 

monster of God ! If Bacon said aright, ' ' Better than 
think ill of God, not think of him at all," then how 
much of our theology is naught ! We judge of men and 
women largety by the simplicity and good taste of 
their dress ; and though some singular fashions have 
been adopted and set to hide personal deformities, no 
costume can quite conceal what is fine or unhandsome in 
the proportions of the human shape. But if nature be 
the apparel of God, what intrinsic benignity must be his ! 
Struggle of an evil principle with a good? How the 
grisl}' phantom of this second supposed adversary flies 
before the torch of science, and one beneficent power 
appears on every hand ! However we ma}^ explain 
suffering, nothing malign can be detected in the mag- 
nificent spectacle so ever-var3'ing in this everlasting 
theatre, and whose stage-properties a kindly manager 
must arrange. What a solace this great show aflfords 
for our grief! Surelj^ the beauty that still shines 
on death-beds and coffins and all that moulders in the 
tombs, which it springs up to cover and adorn, is full 
of comfort and hope ; and when we look on the face 
of the dead, — so composed, every distortion of disease 
removed, and even the wrinkles of age smoothed away, 
while so common!}' a smile seems stealing back to the 
lips on the third da}', and the features of a little child 
are so sweet we can scarce bear to drop the lid on 
its bier, — sorrow as we must, we cannot despair. 
What a true hint, moreover, in the Hebrew phrase, "the 
beauty of holiness ; " for how ugly it is to be impure ! 
Many a bird or beast loves and cares to be clean ; but 
there is an idea of sanctity held by man alone. The 
horse greedy for his oats, and the dog biting whoso 



102 PRINCIPLES. 

meddles with his bone, find for their sensualit}^ no re- 
buke in the surrounding scene. Human creatures alone 
are sensual^ because they can imagine what cleanses or 
pollutes. What a speechless reproof lights on our drunk- 
enness from the steadfast orbs ; and how the spotless 
heavens look down grieving at every sinful excess ! 
To instruction in French and music let us for our chil- 
dren add some lesson of beauty every da}^, to prevent 
and moderate the passions, which there is so much in 
our social habits to stir. No fear of base incentives 
can there be for those by whom this nobler stimulus is 
felt. 

If we do not clamor to insert the name of God in any 
written instrument after that most venerable Declaration 
of Independence, in which the nation, yet unborn, made 
its appeal, it is because in our real constitution no word 
is engraved so deeply ; and should any legislature pre- 
sume to enact atheism^ what a tornado of wrath, which no 
other issue could stir, would arise to hurl the legislators 
from their seats ! God is in man. The German Heine 
may be a good witness that, if we do not confound 
Christ with, we must not part him from God, and that 
our judgment of the Divinity must have sentiment 
rather than criticism for a test. "Christ," he says, 
"is the born Dauphin of Heaven, and has democratic 
sympathies, and delights not in costly ceremonies, and 
is a modern God of the people, a citizen-God." He 
adds : ' ' From the moment that a religion seeks the aid 
of philosophy, its ruin is inevitable. It must not at- 
tempt to justify itself. The instant it ventures to print 
a catechism supported b}^ arguments, it is near its 
end." We are not first in this case. The God whom 



DEITY. 103 

we are after was up before us, and must wake us with 
that hght of his countenance which the morning is, or 
we could never be stirred. Atheism serves us b}' pro- 
voking to a better theism. We can no longer worship 
the God of the old articles, — a being jealous of his 
own glor}^ and dooming his children to eternal woe. 
Our God is one who has no time or disposition to re- 
member himself. He remembers us, and finds himself 
in his children's breasts. He is blessed in their happi- 
ness, conscious in their persons, and parentally careful 
for their good. He rushes into action and measures 
not his course, nor broods over injuries nor avenges his 
wrongs. Only the harm we would do ourselves he can- 
cels and corrects. 

It is a cuiious circumstance in the scripture chro- 
nolog}' of the idea of God, that while Job knows not 
where to find him and David cannot flee from him any- 
where, Jesus blends with him in one being. What a 
progress of millennial steps, and what a stride fi*om 
that Hebrew monotheism to which Mohammedanism 
reverts ! In every one he is. With all the gasping 
or bleeding to death, 3'et the greenwood thicket, unfre- 
quented desert, or solitar}' shore, where in single com- 
bat men seek to stab or blast out each other's life, 
and the field or open sea, where armed hosts or battle- 
ships meet in deadly shock, — are full of a grandeur 
and grace which no anguish can obliterate or plough- 
ing of cannon-balls either merge or uproot. To the 
atheistic argument drawn from suftcring who but the 
sufferer replies? After an exhausting illness, away 
from home, I was put, on my journey through a great 
cit}', alone in an upper chamber under the eaves, there 



104 PRINCIPLES. 

being no other room in the inn. I crept to a dormer- 
window, open because the air was mild, and gazed out 
into the starlit firmament and on the illuminated street. 
As I felt the soft breeze cool mj fevered nerves, and 
hearkened to the stroke toward midnight of every city- 
clock, and as I held to life with a grasp so weak and an 
attachment so loose, I was stirred with a sensibilit}^ to the 
glor}^ without me never felt before. It was but a repe- 
tition of the ecstasy that had lifted me once before, as 
I lay for a week in bed, with the north-wind blowing at 
the glass panes and the billows foaming and resounding 
over the rocks hard b}^ Was there for any figure of 
health and strength that ran and leaped along the crags, 
or rocked and sped on the billows, transport compar- 
able to my pervading peace ? Who that has ever got 
up from a couch of chronic sickness or of violent dis- 
ease but will remember the rapture of his first ride in 
the open air, perhaps among melting snows and spring- 
ing grass and budding trees? There is no measure 
for this faith. Agassiz and other Alpine explorers 
found they could not hold even a glacier in their stakes. 
By a motion of the frozen particles, for which no meter 
has been invented, so the long and monstrous mass of 
ice flowed imperceptibly with all its serpentine wind- 
ings, and over its ever-shifting and uneven bed, down 
the hills, keeping every slope and valley full, and carry- 
ing the stakes the philosophers had driven so fast in 
its course. Thus all your stiff articles to fix a tide of 
life which is fathomless and far diverse from au}^ glac- 
ier, will inevitably be borne along, and found, if at all, 
in diflferent places from those where, as finalities of doc- 
trine, they were put ; and no sledge-hammer strokes will 
suflSce for their arrest. 



DEITY. 105 

Atheism would seem, in den3ing an}- demonstration of 
God, to strike all the oracles dumb, and silence in con- 
venticle or cathedral ever}' chant and praj-er. But it 
were easier to fasten on the volcano a safety-valve, to 
hold back the geysers of Iceland, to check the sea's 
steaming into clouds, or the warmer currents of air from 
rising into ether farther than any thermometer can fol- 
low, than to stop these risings, which we call anthems 
and supplications, from the human heart. When you 
have prevented the weather itself with any particular 
gauge of its phenomena, then you may hope with your 
prayer-gauge to abolish this meteorology within. 

Religion in our schools is called a sectarian thing. 
Is the wind sectarian because it is used for a particular 
man's van, or vane, or sail of his outgoing ship? Is the 
water sectarian because it irrigates his garden, or on 
the Merrimack or at Niagara is turned on the wheels of 
his mill ? Is the earth sectarian because little bits of its 
surface are by special ownership turned into fenced 
fields? Is the light sectarian because it is possessed 
and emploj^ed for jour private purposes as it streams in 
at your window-panes? If not, then is not religion 
sectarian because, in the precincts of one or another 
denomination, it is embodied, appropriated in certain 
articles, and set fortli in peculiar forms ; and God does 
not belong to any party because his nature is con- 
strued in some especial way. He is the truth of things. 
The thread the}' are strung on, as a nec^'^ace, is alive. 
He is beauty, which is expression in nature as in a hu- 
man face. He is the goodness which all good implies, 
as it puts the receivers under that necessity of thanks 
which is the best proof of a Deity ; for it is so needful 



106 PRINCIPLES. 

to be grateful for what we enjoy that we should make a 
fetich could our soul have no other vent. Not only an 
argument has to be answered, but an instinct must 
become extinct before atheism can prevail. Does the 
denier expect to quench the pious flame? An innate 
reverence in the human breast withstands and forbids. 
Religion is the unfailing bequest. We have protective 
societies for children, to guard them against the cruelty 
sometimes even of parental hands. Let us in churches 
and schools of every sort defend them against atheism 
and unbelief. ' ' A strong tower is our God," sang Lu- 
ther. It is a fort we well can hold. The atheist is a 
man against God or the idea of God in the human mind. 
Whence, I ask him, did this adversary of his come? Is 
the unseen opponent that he assails a fiction or invention 
of the priests ? The cup of real life is not only full to 
overflowing, but well-nigh broken by the glory poured 
into it, sometimes almost too great to bear. 

Let us admit progress of the idea of God. If Job could 
not find him, and David could not flee from him, Jesus 
was one with him. He so chanted him that my fine 
pianist affirms that he was the greatest musician that 
ever lived, adding, "I might be laughed at in Boston 
for such a sentiment, but should be understood in Leip- 
sic or Berlin." "Without God," he continued, '^all 
our thoughts are as colors in the night." " But," says 
the last radical paper I read, " God is but a figure of 
speech ! " Is he not the speech itself ? While we search 
after God, he searches after us. He becomes aware of 
himself, as the German philosopher said, in the human 
mind. While we, like Job, are hunting for him, he 
finds himself not on a throne, in a palace, with crown 



DEITY. lOT 

on his head or sceptre in his hand, but in our contrite 
and obedient heart. For humility alone makes room, 
and lifts up its gate, that he ma}^ come in. He accepts 
no lodging, and can get no accommodation in our 
pride. In mountainous regions the valleys take in 
more of the sun than do the hills ; and our lowliness is 
his reception. 



108 PRINCIPLES. 



IV. 

SCIENCE. 

NO knowledge of human nature can be exact or 
complete. Man is a whole, and cannot be dis- 
sected till he is dead, has left to the anatomist and 
undertaker what he has no further use for, and can be 
more entire without. If then we accept- the definition 
science gives of itself, as dealing only with appearances 
that begin and end, there is in it no more religion than 
in a squirrel's stowing awa}^ of acorns, a bee's economy 
of wax, or the building of a beaver's dam ; and if Mr. 
Buckle's doctrine be correct, that to know more is the 
only progress, then knowledge is of no use and scarce 
worth the time and pains. For even philosophy were a 
poor pursuit if it did not lead to love and service of 
God and man. A student who had made metaphj'sics 
his college elective said he liked it, ' ' but it led to no 
place." It is but the crooked log through which the pig 
tried in vain to get into his pen, if it stop in speculation. 
It is fiiU of promise only as a waj^-station, and it is 
good if it enlarge our heart. Open questions are the 
mind's unclosed windows, excellent for ventilation, and 
a final theorj' is not to be desired. The notion of evolu- 
tion is for the animal organism a beautiful fit, as of a 
shoe to the foot or glove to the hand : but what is 
evolved must have been involved ; and, like the bo3'''s 



SCIENCE. 109 

lead whirligig, the wheel is found to turn back in many 
a vegetable and animal race, and the interior principle 
of the process is all the while undisclosed. The world 
finds a tj'pe in the jelly-fish which expands and con- 
ti'acts with its tentacles its transparent sphere ; nor can 
an}' one tell which was first, the nebula or the star. 
Darwin cannot demonstrate that man is an ascended 
beast, any more than could Swedenborg that beast is 
a descended man. Only this categor}' holds, that the 
universe could not have come from a vesicle, there 
never having been a time when a universe must not 
have been. Everlasting together are the plan and plan- 
ner and thing planned, and Agassiz's ocean of germs 
is as satisfactory as a single bulb to start nature with ; 
but what was the primary and is the perpetual push we 
have 3'et to inquire. The raw material escapes in its 
minuteness, and the Architect in his infinit3\ Tile and 
tiler are hid ; and the scientist is a charlatan, a shoe- 
maker who has dropped his last, or a watchman off his 
beat, if he pretend in any scheme that all which is 
can be understood. The great philosophers are distin- 
guished from the small ones in aflfirming that no phi- 
losophy can cover the ground. Newton, Kepler, and 
Swedenborg exceed Laplace and Humboldt in genius 
and fame. Farada}' and Davy abroad and Henr}^ and 
Pierce among us bear witness to the Rock of Ages 
underlj-ing all beside. Till the mountainous reputa- 
tions are blasted and blown away, science must serve 
and not rule ; and the specialist will not help or pros- 
per, unless the universal set his stint. 

There is a saintly as well as a scientific knowledge ; 
and if scientists say it is feeling and not knowledge, 



110 PRINCIPLES. 

they can be pushed on this point as much as they push the 
saints. What is it to know facts, and what fact do they 
know ? Their apprehension of any process or element, 
as of Hght, gravity, motion, electricity, or magnetism, 
is so shallow and slight as no more to merit the name 
of knowledge than the devotee's communion with that 
immense soul of which he is a part. A Deity external 
and separate from the worshipper cannot be found in 
any depth of earth or sky ; but he is revealed in our 
conscience and heart. Be3^ond all the demonstrations 
from necessary ideas or actual works, is the proof by 
prayer. When we listen to a real petition, or read its 
genuine words, or are moved to put it up, a conviction 
rises of the object it is inspired by and goes to, which 
deserves the name of acquaintance no less trul}^ than 
any rational deduction or observation of the outward 
world. Let us drive the logician or experimenter to his 
intrenchments, charging him with sciolism if he pre- 
sume to indict us for superstition ! Strange ecstasy of 
the mystic, from which we cannot withhold our respect ! 
The artist's aureola did not create, but came from the 
halo around his head. In his transport he cannot keep 
his feet on the ground. Live coals seem to have 
touched his lips to eloquence beyond oratory of the 
senate or the court. Naught so resistless as the conta- 
gion of his sj^mpathy for the human heart. The dead 
that lie on the bier have a resurrection to every hearer 
in the uplifting of his speech. 

The saint, says Mohammedan piet}^ does not admit 
that he is afflicted. Suffering itself seems to waken a 
consciousness that it is wrong to reproach God. Job's 
wife, not Job, wants to curse. Those not smitten by a 



SCIENCE. Ill 

calamity take the great name in vain ; but " though he 
slay me, I will ti*ust in him." If he be almighty, he 
cannot be all-good, says Mr. Mill. But may we not 
have a false notion of power? It does not consist in 
harmonizing the contradictory or doing the impossible. 
Is it in the power of God to make mountains without 
valleys, or seas without waves? It is alike bej'ond the 
compass of his ability to make character without disci- 
pline, or by arbitrament abate for our final welfare a jot 
of what we endure. No doubt he does for us the best 
he can ! This counterweight for the sceptic's argument 
is in the confession of such as by the Lord are sorely 
grieved. " Oh no, 3'ou shall not say any thing against 
him," cries the victim ; and surely no voice has more 
right in this matter than his own. What miracle, more 
than to multiply bread in the desert, or at a wedding 
turn water into wine, is wrought in the agonizing 
breast ? Not till we become its subject can we know ; 
but its experience in others we cannot gainsa3^ There 
is an evolution not on the earth or in the succession of 
its animated tribes. We are ourselves astonished at 
the sentiments toward our Author that in the hardest 
passes and over the most bitter cups rise to the sur- 
face and come to the front. Are they knowledge, or 
fancy and a makeshift for refuge when we are in a cor- 
ner and hard pressed? No one in whom they exist 
allows their illusiveness ! The wisest are most ear- 
nest to insist that from these sensibilities of a resigned 
and adoring soul their best information comes. 

Meantime to how many queries science cannot repl}^ ! 
Is the earth a ball or a shell? Is there a Northwest 
passage and a circumpolar sea ? Will the magnetic and 



112 PRINCIPLES. 

planetar}^ axes or the ecliptic and equator ever coin- 
cide ? Is electricity the same as motion, and lightning 
as light ; or have all the species unfolded from one 
germ? Is the atomic or the nebular theor}^ true, or has 
the beast a human origin or a future life? But such 
questions stir a moderate curiosity, in comparison with 
these other inquiries, whether I am begotten and born 
of a greater than mortal thought and love, which will 
do right by me, and answer all my queries before I 
decease, — in which case I am sure I can never die, — 
and justify the aspirations that have their vent and bub- 
bling fount in a bosom whose jet does not slacken, but 
gets more warm and lively as I grow more old. 

Science adds to the uses of life, but its prompter 
and precursor is faith ; for without prior belief that 
the world is a form and series of permanent relations, 
we should lack all motive to investigation, and no less 
all reason for action ; for who, without crediting that 
what he discovered must abide, would think it worth his 
while to explore the heavens and the earth ? The writer 
to the Hebrews gives us a long list — Abraham and 
Noah and Moses and Abel and other sublime names — 
of such as proceeded, without knowledge, by faith. 
How easity we could make out a modern score ! By 
faith Columbus sailed for a Western world. By faith 
New^ton beheld in the apple a little globe, and in the 
sun, moon, and stars but falling apples. By faith 
Franklin and Kane put forth after open channels at the 
frozen pole. By faith Benjamin Franklin lifted his 
kite to the cloud, to verif}^ a suspicion that lightning 
and electricity are the same. By faith Morse foresees 
a pen that reaches over land and under sea. By faith 



SCIENCE. 113 

Goodyear predicts a substance, whose utilities he has 
to guess at before he can make good. By faith Mor- 
ton risks murder in an operation, to learn if continued 
life be consistent with insensibilit}' to pain ; and ether 
becomes the physical savior of mankind. By faith 
Leverrier is put on the track of a new planet from ob- 
served perturbations of the old. From the same faith, 
now laughed at, men will travel and fly in the air from 
shore to shore, b}- and by. 

Knowledge has not only its origin, but its end in 
faith. But for faith's ministry to the jo^'ful exercise 
of our moral and affectional nature, how imperfect a 
satisfaction it were to know ! Without the marvelling, 
which I have heard called moonshin}' and moon-ej^ed, 
our perceiving would come to a barren pause. As I 
look from some headland, betwixt islands, out upon the 
main, and detect that curve in the planet which no 
plain is broad or smooth enough to hint, as the vast 
ball rounds itself to my imagination beyond my 
sight, and I think of it as in the stellar universe 
but an insignificant mote, the thrill comes not in what 
my eye comprises, but in what my thought suspects. 
My transport is in the inward launch into amazement 
of my mind. I have a hft which no vessel, heaving on 
the surge, can feel. Is it said. Let the brute fear and 
wonder, it is man's province to know? I reply, Man 
knows more than the beast, but only to wonder more. 
His astonishment deepens and widens with his survey ; 
and one cause for his hope of conscious personality after 
death lies in his judgment that no continuance, through 
whatever mortal obstructions, can surprise him more 
than being and living at all. " The voyage, but that he 

8 



114 PRINCIPLES. 

has taken it, were as incredible as any salvage from 
the wreck ! Shall I not, therefore, take myself as I am, 
and make an inventor}'^ of the contents of m}^ own 
soul? If I find a migratory instinct in it, why not 
obey it like an emigrant bird, and, as did those men of 
old, " seek a city which hath foundations, whose builder 
and maker is God"? Must I justify my spiritual 
frame to a S3'llogistic expert? I should as soon think 
of making out to his contentment my title to a san- 
guine or nervous temperament, to the cubits of my 
stature or the color of my eyes. Let him stay in his 
phlegm, and stoop to his hole in the ground, to affirm 
it must cover all ! I shall not be balked at the dead 
line because he balks. My native instinct is to picture 
and aspire, and to believe that my canvas of a New 
Jerusalem means something, however poorly my pen- 
cil may draw. I must value what I know, as serving 
for what I would reach, like the legs of a horse, wing 
of a bird, or fin of a fish. Why care for knowledge if 
it be not strength ? The end of a man is not a thought, 
but an act ; as no idea, but an ever-evolving uni- 
verse, is the end of God. In the Greek marble what 
I admire is the blowing out of Jove's beard with his 
breath ! Every invention in the arts of life has sec- 
ondary and higher advantage for the mind. In itself 
science is a pursuit and prosecution, not peace. It is 
an unsettled trial in a moot court. How the old the- 
ories are disturbed by new ones, — of light, electricity, 
gravitation, the tides, above all, of life, in its nature, 
origin, and extent. Ixion rolling his wheel was not 
more restless, or Tantalus more athirst. The race we 
run is noble, the competition exhilarating ; and what 



SCIENCE. 115 

riches drop by the way ! But no conckisions are 
reached. Peace passeth understanding : the Scripture 
is true ! In the motions of the soul alone is rest. 
In an organism, saj's Immanuel Kant, all the means 
are ends. We may add, a spirit is that in which 
affection is satisfaction, and flight is ease. Most 
men are like travellers in haste for some unseen point 
ahead. What they see or where they are, passes for 
naught ; the}- are wretched till they arrive at the city, 
mountain, waterfall, or dell. But at last, with a sense 
of beaut}' for our ej^e-salve, we discern Nature's equality 
in all her parts ; that she pitches her tent in no chosen 
place, that land and overarching sky are God's pavil- 
ion, and we are arriving all the time. He whose heart 
is stayed on principle has love for his breath, and, 
conscious of rectitude on the journey, never leaves the 
inn. Heaven is not a goal, but a way, which is its own 
object and delight. 

Yet all material inventions unseal or illustrate spir- 
itual things. If planetary perturbations can be ac- 
counted for only by the action of an unseen orb, do not 
the perturbations of human life require another world ? 
Is not a swifter converse through wider tracks the 
suggestion or prediction of the lightning's antipodal 
talk ? Does not the telephone hint that all the extraor- 
dinary^ and supernatural hearings reported ma}^ be nat- 
ural too? Shall not the phonograph say what a huge 
record-book is the universe? You may tell me I am 
but a blossom of matter, a handful of dust scooped out 
of the earth. I present you the whole globe, 'per con- 
tra^ as my camel, by this telephonic trick, harnessed 
for my idea or my affection to ride, and kneeling like 



116 PEINCIPLES. 

llama or dromedary to lift the burden of my thought. 
Shall the rider be trampled into ashes at the end ? As 
Rarey tamed the horse, we tame the orb with its m3T- 
iad horse-power. Paul Revere rode fast ; Greek hill- 
tops flashed out the news ; torches, passed from hand 
to hand, have been mediums, balloons and carrier- 
pigeons communicators, in peace and war. The Amer- 
ican Revolutionary spy sews a letter into his dress, or 
Stillman, in Hungary, hides it in the heel of his boot ; 
an ice-boat outstrips the locomotive ; and, more swift 
and reticent errand-bearer, a wire is now taught to hear 
as well as see. Particles of matter, or centres and 
lines of force, are our vessels and transportation-com- 
panies ; and, suspended in air, career freight-trains and 
baggage-cars. Light, sight, sound, and hearing are 
all motion ; motion is force ; and force is God. The 
earth has shrunk to a spinning-top or a shining pin on 
the floor. Space and time, made, as one said, to keep 
us apart, are annulled to bring us together. Our 
voice goes, fast as our purpose, into an iron ear hun- 
dreds of miles long. There shall be no secrets ; all 
nature is an escritoire, every drawer of which may be 
unlocked. 

But this IS all figure. What a better telephone is 
that memory through which come the rebuke and love 
that saluted the morning of our life ! A grown man 
in my neighborhood tells me how fresh to him are the 
friendly words I spoke when he was a little boy. The 
ringing of the church-bell at Ruel moves Napoleon, the 
powder-stained captain, to tears, as its chime sets all 
the old belfries rocking again. Once familiar spec- 
tacles may be far away ; but sounds are the same as 



SCIENCE. 117 

ever, from the church-tower, from the wind rattUng the 
panes, from the thunder crashing overhead, so near, 
into bolts of splendor and sheets of rain that stirred to 
awe and worship the bo}', as over the country road he 
went home from school. Hark to the old intonations of 
our kindred, repeated fifty 3^ears after by strangers who 
know not why with wet ej-es we love their persons so ! 
I hear still the neighbors' chat in m}^ far-away birth- 
place, and my own voice in my father's parlor reciting 
to them the seventeenth chapter of John, or Cowper's 
lines after his mother's funeral, which almost broke my 
heart, children being often hurt by not being under- 
stood. I seize the peculiar and exact accent in the 
family doctor's laugh sixt}' years ago, breezy and nasal 
as it was, with a strong New England flavor, more from 
his head than his chest or throat. The brooks I played 
by still gurgle with endless laughter, and the wooden 
rockers of the chair with whose monotone my mother 
hushed me to sleep resound hard on the sanded floor. 
The brass cannon stuns me ; and I jQi shrink and 
shiver at its sharp discharge at Freeport Corner, on the 
soldiers' parade, the War of 1812 having just passed 
awaj'', leaving its smoky field-pieces and remnants of 
ammunition behind. Commander and troop are dead, — 

" Their bodies are dust, 
And their good swords rust ; " 

but I hear the order given and the stead}" tramp of the 
men. I passed by the house where, a young man, I was 
entertained. Host and hostess were dead, their epitaphs 
moss-grown, their children scattered whither I knew 
not ; but the strains of welcome, as of 3'ore, issued at 



1,18 PRINCIPLES. 

the gate. Where and how shall the hospitality be re- 
turned? O upper friends, hear at least m}^ thanks ! 

So there is not an atom but answers to a thought. 
Shall not the telephonic apparatus end or prevent mis- 
understanding, make diplomacy a conversation, and 
among hostile or jealous nations put peaceful greetings 
for bloody cartels ? The telephone is to the crinxinal a 
threat. He cannot fly with the lightning, more than a 
dog can run with the train. This sharp gossip of the 
magnet he shall not escape. There is a second hearing 
as well as a second sight. When the voice was heard 
from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son," some 
said it thundered, others that an angel spake to him. 
What the voice was no science more than ignorance 
can decide. The man of coolest head in Boston told 
me, that, musing in his chair one night, words came to 
him in distinct articulation, " There is another world." 
What is music but a score which the composer over- 
hears, — celestial harps or voices from afar, like ord- 
nance at long range, delivering even to deaf Beethoven 
the tune and to Mendelssohn the " songs without 
words " ? I know not if ' ' the cloud of witnesses " 
ever break for us into speech. But our yearning is 
prophecy, echoed b}' ever}' prophet, that they will. " I 
thought," said a mother, ' ' my dead boy would speak 
to me, and I held my breath to hearken. As we sailed 
over Lake Lucerne, I believed if I could but get rowed 
on to the horizon, he would appear ! " 

Faith incites to knowledge, and knowledge returns to 
faith. We live in a circle, if we do not reason in one. 
Faith and knowledge are alternate buckets of the water 
of life. Could we know absolutely, we should not be 



SCIENCE. 119 

content with knowing ! We know but this, that naught 
can be quite known ; and Hegel can scarce persuade us 
that " nothing is the equivalent of being.'' For we can 
absolutely love, trust, and hope. There is no sure opin- 
ion. The onl}^ certaintj^ is in what we feel. In us 
more than out of us is the miracle. What sound so 
strange as our own recollection ! A friend saw in a 
store where she went to buy meat for her sick husband 
a box of pansies, which at once brought back the face 
and voice of the woman who tended and fed her in a 
garden when she was a little girl. The reminder swept 
her away from the provision-dealer's stall, from her 
present home, from her gray hairs and the age of the 
world she hves in, to the long-passed period and dis- 
tant spot where the pansies bloomed and the motherly 
guardian nourished. Again she saw, again she heard, 
— form, feature, inflection came back ; lost in thought, 
and her purchase suspended, she stood like a statue, 
and worshipped the pansies. Did God charge her with 
idolatry, or was he not more to her in the pansies than 
in the sky? What metallic ear, or resonant plate, or 
resolution of sound into motion, is so marvellous as this 
phonogi^phy of the soul? The surprise in the phono- 
graph is that pitch and tone can be printed in and re- 
verberate from so small a space, like the Lord's Prayer 
on a gold dollar. But how much finer is the entry in 
and recovery from the human brain ! The old accents, 
gracious or peevish, the upward or downward slides of 
the voice, in what fac-similes sharper than coins from 
the mint, come back through all the confusions of 
scores of 3'ears ! This rejoinder of brain and nerve is 
more delicately accurate than the invisible tracery of 



120 PRINCIPLES. 

the phonograph needle. It shames all lace- work in its 
transcript on this bone-protected cerebral inner curve, 
and in these living molecules which ph3^siologists num- 
ber by millions, as if there were one to store ever}^ single 
impression and pack it so close ! The merchant's blot- 
ting-book to copy letters is not, to a comma, so cor- 
rect. What magazines of knowledge, bej'ond treasuries 
of nations and exchequers of kings, are contained some- 
how within these arched walls we call our pericranium ; 
in the head of a scholar and even a numskull, — for a 
fool has more wit and information in his gray lobes 
and the minor recei\ing ganglia than could be engraven 
on Egyptian obelisks or dinted into the layers of the 
globe. There is no understood or calculable length of 
time to which, on the revolving C3iinder of tin-foil, like 
a bonded warehouse, the soft, imperceptible marks that 
imprison syllables will not keep and cry out. Though 
the thin sheet were transferred to another instrument a 
thousand miles away, the}^ will return like a resurrec- 
tion from the dead. But finer-woven 3^et in the human 
organism is a film, with all our declarations and prom- 
ises under lock and key, however long it be before the 
bolted wards be sprung. Is this film, too, transferable 
from our present embodiment so smooth and round? 
As the cranked cylinder turns, we feel the membrane of 
sensibility quiver and the needle of moral feeling prick, 
as though a live metaphor were in the revolution and 
recitation of the senseless tool. How surely in the 
sphere of our own being we carry the heaven and hell 
we so superstitiousl}^ locate and map out in space ! 
What a mocking-bird is in our heart! "Those were 
his very words," said a young woman of what had been 



SCIENCE. 121 

spoken b}- a tempting man. Must the}' not come back 
to him, as with the unpaid bill of a bad debt in their 
hand? And if the}' touch on '' the fear of something 
after death," shall it be a ghost-stor}' to frighten chil- 
dren with? Let the vital phonograph answer as it 
shall work ! "To know my deed, 'twere best not know 
myself," says Macbeth in the play. But our deed is 
web and woof of our self. It is more than an}' flight 
of fancy, though it were Homer's or Shakspeare's. It 
makes our personal identity ; and the shuttle is our will. 
We are an incarnate responsive liturgy for ourselves, and 
from our own lips will come the collect or the curse. 

Telegram is the lightning's message. What is the 
Bible bat a body of phonograms ? In it are cruel laws 
and barbarous edicts, bulls, or bulletins of fanatical 
tribes and savage men. But there are other proclama- 
tions, precious beyond negations of unbelief or encycU- 
cals of popes, and so matching the wants and dumb 
predictions of our nature, that only from the breath of 
God could they be blown. Modulated by a living in- 
strument, they became audible to instruct and console 
millions of mankind. 

There is a backoround of our beinor and a foresfround. 
The background is God and the foreground is heaven. 
But we know in order that we may do. If a thought 
be the ancestor, an act is the heir. Knowledge is but 
clothing and armor for the will. It is building-material 
for character, like timber for our house or ship. Of the 
great questions, Whence, How, Whither, Wherefore, and 
What, the positiA'ist affirms we can deal but with the 
last. But ideas on the other four must throw light by 
w^hich alone the fifth can be clearly shown ; else his 



122 PKINCIPLES. 

knowledge is only skin-deep. A dog with his bone and 
kennel knows what is what; and what is human life more 
than a kennel and a bone, if confined to the sensible 
facts? We understand superficially^, but we are moral to 
the core. How much less we are hurt by ignorance of 
nature than by a misunderstanding of each other or of 
ourselves I In delicate conditions of health or of ner- 
vous apprehension, how a sentiment has power of life 
and death a thousand times oftener than the sheriff 
executes doom ! The fable of the basilisk, with its fatal 
glance, is a sober truth. We live on a justice of which 
no law on the statute-book is sponsor. We commit 
crimes of which no jury can convict. We exercise a 
goodness which it would be insult to pay with an^^ para- 
dise. It is its own reward. In a lively French play 
an interlocutor satirizes that woman^ as he calls her, with 
the scales in her hand on the top of the court-house ; 
sa3dng, he observes there is nothing in them. The weights 
of equity in this perpetual counterbalance of existence 
will be nowhere if not in our deeds, which are born of 
our choice. 

The experimenter with telegraph, telephone, or pho- 
nograph can elect what he will make the pen or mouth 
of his implement speak. Into the little opening, no 
larger than a lady's ear, he may spout an oration, reel 
off rhymes, hum a tune, or wind a horn. But his arbi- 
trary decision ends with that. The undulations carry 
the message. It is an infinitesimal parcel, tied up and 
compacted in the airy bubbles or balloons. The vessel 
or vesicle goes undisturbed though a thunderbolt strike 
the building or an earthquake rock the ground ; and, a 
century after, a touch at the handle would return the 



SCIENCE. 123 

vocal letter-missive. Nothing could hinder, short of a 
violence that should destro}' the impression or the ma- 
chine. But the mental imprint no such interference 
can annul. You determine, at the telegraph office, your 
communication. Halloo after the lightning, will 3'our 
cr^' fetch the order back ? You can only add the arrow 
of another despatch ! So the voluntary passes over 
into the involuntary in our breast. Let us come into 
the elective state, and get out of the gusty latitudes, the 
Cape Horn and Bay of Bisca}^ of capricious inclination 
and selfish passion ! The region of choice is safe ; for 
no man ever chose to be a drunkard or profligate. He 
was swept into villany by desire he had lost power to 
control. The}' choose well who are able to choose at 
all. 

There is necessity for us. We admire a qualitj^ in 
man or woman as we do the landscape. It is involun- 
tar}^, but, O Lord, if it be wrong, please kill me at once, 
for it is necessar}' in my own nature so long as I live. 
It rids me of all that is low in nwself, as we pra}' the 
"angels ever bright and fair" to take us, in our ora- 
torio song. The navigator, long buffeted by the storm 
and b}' shifting squally weather, is glad to get into the 
trade-wind. Right permanent direction of our appetites 
and longings is the trade-wind of the mind. Still must 
the pilot hold his tiller ; and we must be electors in the 
endless sessions and questions that are plit to vote in 
our own breast. That record is the only one we must 
for ever read. We say of a person, he is a man of 
one book. This inward bible is for us all. How the 
preacher mistakes, to say our acts are irrevocable, when 
in the endless revoking all compensation or retribution 
consists ! 



124 PEINCIPLES. 

Science deals with the universe only in one aspect or 
part. The president of a scientific association sums up 
its scope in "the registration of facts or phenomena 
under uniform laws." But there is a manifold expe- 
rience not reckonable as phenomenon or fact. It is 
a state, perhaps an ecstasy or exaltation of mind. 
Scientific men would bring whatever is or transpires 
under the head of material for scientific estimate and 
report. But there are operations of human nature too 
vast and elusive to be so published or surveyed. There 
are revelations, visions, and extraordinary communions 
with God. Doubtless there may be a philosophy of 
the soul in all its conditions and acts. But it is no 
science, properly and technically so called. Only by 
being overstrained can the word science be applied. It 
is a not unhappy doom for some persons to consider 
and study the passions by which they are moved. Such 
an observer Goethe was, who could not rest till he had 
printed his transport in Werther, Wilhelm Meister, or 
Faust. No one ever felt or knew love more deeply than 
he. His information was accurate and his tidings sin- 
cere. He may not have come b}^ his knowledge hon- 
estly alwa3^s. But, after Shakspeare's women, his are 
best, and he offers some varieties beyond the English 
dramatist's surve}', doing more justice to certain forms 
of lowly maiden life. But how he would scoff" at any 
scientist's imputation that he had sounded all the depths 
of this ocean of human feeling with his deep-sea line ! 
Dear companionship bids knowledge stand aside, wait 
as a servant, look on apart, and own it cannot fathom 
or comprehend the blessed intercourse. Darwin, making 
out his theory, tells us what in his own infants he has 



SCIENCE. 125 

observed ; but his evolution could no more exhibit all 
that was in them than Newton's gravitation can spread 
before us the contents of the stars. Science knows not 
commencement. Onl}' procedure it survey's. The puz- 
zle b}' which it is perpetuallj' balked is the origin of life. 
Science is finite in its aim ; and life is infinite in its 
relations, in the least mite that stirs. Semitic genius 
gives us the sentence, immortal and sublime : " In the be- 
ginning God made the heavens and the earth." It is an 
unscientific statement, which no school or academy can 
accept. Every literary author confesses the inadequacy 
of his pen to the vital secret, which an atom manifests 
and which all creation is. " Why leave the Christ out 
of your list of Representative Men?" I asked m}" friend. 
" Because," he answered, " it takes too much strength 
of constitution to put him in." We ma}^ miscall our in- 
spirations and emotions occurrences^ if we will ; but no 
clerk can take account of their stock. The}^ range im- 
mensely beyond the student's eye, as the shifting scenes 
and live tablets of the cit}^ transcend the watchman's 
beat. No explorer has sailed up these streams to the 
fountain-head, and no coast-surveyor by triangulation 
has measured these shores. Whoever loves navigates, 
like Columbus, into latitudes and longitudes before 
unknown ; and whoever imagines transcends. When 
toward m}' headland the Atlantic dips its bowl, I have 
other and more interesting occupation with it than to 
weigh its tons of tide. I lose the beaut}' if I set m3'self 
to analyzing the beams of the day. AVhen what as- 
tronomers call the Milk}' Waj', but which is rather to the 
eye the thinnest veil of gauze ever woven, hangs athwart 
the face of the southern sky, it is curious to learn or 



126 PRINCIPLES. 

remember it is made of worlds round and solid like the 
earth and sun ; but I would not know, if I could, how 
many they are or how big. Like Moses, I see the skirt 
of God's garment ; and, like Kepler and Linnaeus, be- 
holding the same laws above and below, I mark him 
passing hy ; and I exchange the arithmetic that would 
reduce the spectacle to bushel and 3'ardstick, for a proph- 
ecy and a song. When I note the little beach-birds 
hopping so safely in the billows' edge, 1 think of One 
who makes them so fearless and at home, without whom 
the sparrow neither falls nor flies ; and I have to try 
hard not to hate those men who are after them with 
their murderous guns ! As, latel}^, the declining sun 
shone under the ragged line of the retiring storm, some 
sea-birds rose over the sea, half flying and half floating 
on the breeze, that still briskly stirred. How their 
buo3'anc3^ occupied the sky ! Animated bits, as of pure 
white paper scattered from some hand that could throw 
them so far, with idle freedom and the luxury of motion, 
they wavered up and down. They stretched landwards, 
or sought the offing anon. They revelled in the wind 
which, with effortless pinion, they beat. It seemed to 
me as if the firmament was stretched and the gale blew 
for them alone. It was unscientific, but was it wrong, 
when my gazing fanc}' turned them into images of hu- 
man life and love ? These images have their atmosphere, 
which they, with other plumage, strike in their flight. 
Their pinions lift them toward the heavens for a while, 
on that gale which mortality is. But the wind is more 
than the wing, and when that is folded, will still spring 
up. Shall not they be fledged again? The soul is a mi- 
gratory bird : it has another atmosphere, and can well 



SCIENCE. . 127 

afford, at its moulting season, to let the feathers drop it 
is sustained by in time ; not doubting it shall have new 
outfit and find softer climes, and continue to soar. 

In the wide paean for science I would join, were it 
not loud enough without my voice. The orchestral 
conductor discovers at once and summons to its dut}^ 
the too faint instrument in his band ; compared with 
the thirst for knowledge, would not our leader decide 
that the spirit of a just charity is feeble in our time ? 
History, at least, grows more tolerant. How it reha- 
bilitates persons long disreputable and under the ban ! 
We are thinking not so ill as we did of Roman 
emperors and Romish popes. The verdict depends not 
alone on the information of the censor, but on his dis- 
position and point of view. Ernest Renan, as large 
and liberal as he is scholarl}^ and exact, comes to rescue 
the reputation even of the Empress Faustina, wife of 
Marcus Aurelius, from the cloud of disgrace that has 
covered it, without moving, for many an age ; and her 
figure now forms, under his pen, not as a traitress and 
adulteress, but only with free manners as well as splen- 
did charms ; one whom the solemn synod of gray- 
beard courtiers, that the irreproachable Emperor had 
gathered about him, misjudged, while the handsome 
Queen alwa^'s kept his own honor as well as had his 
heart. The very ignominy burnt into a man or wo- 
man may become a glor}' and encaustic painting of 
their worth. The prints of the nails in the hands and 
feet of Jesus were stigmata once ; but the stigmas have 
become points of love and admiration for the world. 
His very countr}', France, qualifies Renan not to be 
harsh on what was gay and unrestrained, and possibly 



128 PRINCIPLES. 

innocent, at Rome. He gives at least, as the old tojbI 
shade sits to him, the benefit of the doubt ; and ob- 
serving how merciless moral decisions are rendered by 
puritanic notions in our day, one inclines to take part 
with the antiquarian student, not more generous than 
he is deep and keen. Since the daughter of Herodias 
danced off John the Baptist's head, all dancing has 
been, with some, an unpardonable sin, which David's 
performance before the ark fails to bless ; and I have 
known an excellent Doctor of Divinity to scowl on the 
young girl that came back to his house rather late from 
the ball. Let us have mercy ! Guns are rifled to 
whirl without bias the bullet true to its aim. Could 
we so rifle our minds, the process were of more worth ! 
The chief science were equit}' to those whose course 
or opinion is against our own. It does not come with 
emancipation from superstitious creeds. None fling 
harder words at their opponents, or at each other when 
they disagree, than those from whom ever}' lending of 
tradition has been cast awaj^ Robert Browning gives 
to Bishop Blougram the best of the argument with the 
sceptic ; and it is not certain that, if the dissenter's 
view be larger, his virtue is more safe. Luther's wife 
inquires of her husband why the family pra3'ers, under 
his brave protest, are losing warmth. Mr. Lecky finds 
that, in taking off the strain of a fanatical faith, some 
risk is run. May we be so rational in our speculation 
as to lose the earnestness of our life? Renan, dis- 
coursing of the degradation of language, sa3''s an ever- 
lasting balancing appears to be the law of human 
things. We must have either nobility for a small num- 
ber, he declares, or vulgarity for all. But a conclusion 



SCIENCE. 129 

SO sad must be incorrect. As the entire level of con- 
tinents has been lifted above the sea, so the tribes that 
inhabit them are raised. There is small danger that 
the mass of men will be scientific to excess ! But 
humanity becomes deformit}" in such as are scientific 
alone. 

Centralization is better than secession in the state, 
and specialization disintegrates if it do not serve gen- 
eralization. Mountains and seas cannot become private 
propert}'. Nothing grand in nature can be marked off. 
It is churlish for the proprietor to warn back, with his 
dog or man or bolted gate, the human race from 
Niagara, Mount Washington, or the Atlantic shore ; and 
there is no appropriation or private interpretation of 
truth. The towns on the coast insist on retaining the 
old beaches and ocean- walks ; and that is no precious 
possession or invention in which the whole humanit}^ is 
not concerned. What a degraded menial is the light- 
ning if it cany only a sharp bargain or bloody threat ! 
If the wires be not busy with worth}* errands, how use- 
less is their stretch and how idle is the nimble Ariel they 
can command ! The fatalist Turk, whose tropic clime 
has never been reflected in any sunny face of his own, 
and whose crescent has become a waning moon, as he 
curses with immobility' the population he rules and the 
soil he tills, " means but that he is laz}' when he says that 
Allah is great ! " As an abstraction, without application, 
how impertinent it is to speak of loving the truth ! Is it 
an affection like Zerah Colburn's for the multiplication- 
table ? It is barren if it would stop even in Isaac New- 
ton's contemplation of the stars ! Can it hover over 
a collection of manuscripts, coins, or fossil remains? 

9 



130 PRINCIPLES. 

What would if signif}^ to fill the Patent Office with dis- 
coveries of no profit to mankind? Science must be 
touched with feeling to be welcome ; yet we must not 
doubt a benefit in all we find out, and an object in 
whatever mankind pursues. My atheistic friend, gaz- 
ing at the piles of theology in the British Librarj', des- 
cants to the showman on such a monument of waste. 
But, as the bees have not misspent their da}' at their 
yellow masomy , though the time come when no more 
honey is held in their wax, and as the coral-insects do not 
throw away themselves and their time, as they mortar 
together, under the sea, the solid banks that shall look 
white and ruddy as they at last shore up the world, 
and edge the continents with cities of men, so all faith- 
ful study, of things human or divine, shall be a stay 
for civilization and some time see the light, even if 
afterward, under the roll of centuries, it crumble and 
disappear. The mind is instinctively wistful concern- 
ing itself, and would know its origin and end. While 
it drinks at whatever spring its curiosity may find to 
slake its thirst, who is this that, in the name of free- 
dom, would drug the cup ? There is no opiate that can 
put intellect to sleep. 

Science should be equivalent to knowledge. But the 
explosion of a heap of biblical assumptions or misin- 
terpretations has aggravated and sped materialism, 
which is the drift of this generation, to limit knowledge 
to the information which the senses import into the 
mind. There is a knowledge of things, or rather only 
a little knowledge about any thing. But there is, too, 
a knowledge of ideas which are not things, a knowledge 
of beauty which is but a spirit expressed, and a knowl- 



SCIENCE. 131 

edge of persons who are not things ; and in comparison 
with this knowledge, all that comes by weight and meas- 
ure, and can be circumscribed in any definite time and 
space, is shallow and of little worth. Do I not know 
m}' friend, for whom I have no formula? The faculty 
for spiritual and personal knowledge is compound, like 
the instrument with its apparatus in an observator}^ ; 
but its result is simple, and not ephemeral, like all the 
statements of ph3'sical science. We know Justice, but 
never saw her scales ; she is known by that conscience 
in us which is her even beam. We know love not 
b}' an observation, but an unsought impression, and by 
that answer in our own breast but for which another's 
affection would be like the Indian Standing Bear's 
speech without an interpreter. Paul writes about 
" knowing the love of Christ." Was it Christ's love 
for the disciple, or the disciple's for him? It was 
both ; for the love was bigger than the Master or fol- 
lower, as the love betwixt any two is bigger than we 
and all mankind, and uses us and every one for its own 
ends. We know by certain tests how much pressure 
or strain our building materials will bear in an iron 
girder, steel span, or granite arch. We know the en- 
durance of our companion as well, but may have no 
calculation of its strength and reach. If it be a divine 
propert}^ the gravitation of the globe cannot crush it or 
the roll of years tire it out. Jesus knew God, as any 
saint may, with transcendent knowledge. 

But how know aught of the future, in the wa}' relig- 
ious people pretend ? ' ' Do you know any thing about 
it?" asked the sick man, as an orthodox saint talked 
to him about heaven. Does not the scientist know that 



132 PRINCIPLES. 

an Alpine glacier will, though imperceptibly, slip down 
the mountain gorge ; that the boat or log in the rapids 
of Niagara will be swept over the brink ; that a partic- 
ular plant or tree, and no other, will come of this or 
that seed ; and, by the law of heredity, a certain sort of 
parent will propagate children of his or her own kind ? 
Is not all this knowledge not only of the present, but 
of what is to come ? I know that he who drinks and 
drabs is going to hell, and that he who joyfull}^ gives 
his life for others is going to heaven, as much as I 
know that the congregation on the steps is coming in, 
or the boy, with his books and slate under his arm, is 
going to school. Things follow their tendencies ; what 
do we all know better than that ? The prophet and his 
prophecy are possible and true by virtue of this law 
and fact. But heaven is not a matter of chronology, or 
bit of territory, beyond the tomb, staked out. It is a 
state of mind with a mortgage on paradise which eter- 
nity alone can pay. The athlete knows he can leap 
over a ditch ; and a completely developed soul knows 
it can jump across the pawning chasm of the grave, 
though it drop its garment by the way. Business men 
proceed on the principle that causes produce effects ; 
and if matter originated mind, or the impersonal 
brought forth personality, it would be in violation of 
the law that from the lower the higher cannot come. 
Stories of bodily resurrection are Invented for such as 
cannot know their immortality in the lift and rapture 
of their powers. When Raphael makes the figures of 
Jesus, Moses, and Elias float as if a wind blew their rai- 
ment up, we credit the transfiguration, because we all 
have seasons of inward ascension, in which we know 



SCIENCE. 133 

we are like balloons struggling at their last cords, held 
back from glor}' but for a time. If we have such relig- 
ious knowledge that heaven and hell are but harvest- 
ings of a crop which in wet or drought, cold or heat, 
can never fail, then where, in what school, public or 
private or parochial, and under whatever auspices of 
Church or State, should it not be taught? By what right 
do reading, writing, and arithmetic, which are but the 
bare language of knowledge, take precedence or prior 
importance to knowledge itself ? Can we get out of 
the atmosphere, or go where we shall have no need of 
light and water and ground, or where the attractions 
of nature are not obeyed? Even there we could not 
escape God, or be rid of the hold of his law. 



134 PRINCIPLES. 



V. 

ART. 

THE human mind has long refused the pre-eminent 
claim of art in its " court of common pleas," and 
estops it still, through a superstition as to the sacred- 
ness, above all transformations by industry, of the crude 
matter of the globe. Thus, in the name of religion, is 
aggravated among us that materialism of which artists 
from Europe complain. But that avarice of gain, which 
is half our worship, ends in a rude shock when, with the 
keen logic of Mammon, our clerks pilfer bonds from the 
precious little trunks so tempting to their hands, and 
when we ourselves municipall}' illustrate the swindling 
we reprobate, as we " set a thief to catch a thief," com- 
pound with felon}' , and bait our trap for a criminal with 
a crime. Art, in its noble sense and with its superior 
joy, has use to lure us away from mean delights ; for we 
do not seem, with all our churches, to be made honest 
by religion alone. Sorely we need, and heartil}^ should 
hail, that truer interpretation of nature which presents 
the world but as a block for us to shape, as a father 
throws a bit of wood to a boy for him to cut out his 
whistle or boat. The Menai Straits bridge, the Mont 
Cenis tunnel, the New York wharves on the North and 
East rivers, the pontooning of the deep with a thou- 
sand steamers, and the diiving of locomotive trains to 



ART. 135 

mountain- tops, are not an accretion, excrescence, or 
parasite-growth, but an increase and extension of the 
world, like the chasing and incrustation from which some 
precious substance gets half its worth. The broken 
flower-pot in a poor man's window has a sentimental 
value which the loam could not compare with before it 
revolved on the potter's wheel ; and the plant itself, pro- 
duced from many crossings, is a work of art, as also is 
the enormous horse, of Dutch breed, in a London dray. 
Is not man himself a cultivated animal ? Nothing is 
left of all that was in Noah's ark ; and the ark is no 
more behind a Cunarder or Baltimore clipper than all 
its biped or quadruped contents lag after the living 
forms of to-day. Piety consists not in letting Nature 
have the upper hand, but in getting the weather-gauge 
of her ; and when one carries his respect for her so far 
as to say we speak of weeds only because we know not 
theu' uses, his worship takes a low flight. Man's voca- 
tion is to exalt the earth-maker's work in degrees with- 
out end, as from a tree we get timber, from the timber 
staves, from the staves a powder-cask, from the powder- 
cask a painted jar. Is not the Arch of Titus at Rome 
worth more than its tons avoirdupois of stone or square 
rood of ground, as the histor}' of Judaea nestles in its en- 
gravings and hangs on its walls, while the procession of 
the golden candlestick lights up its interior space ? Not 
in the rough planet, but its tidings^ are we concerned ; 
and as emotion stirs the preacher or painter, words and 
colors are thrown up like weaves of the sea. Magni- 
tude is nothing ; spirit is all. There are great heads on 
medals which are very small. The pleasure from a large 
landscape or a little picture, said oiir Hunt, is the same. 



136 PBINCIPLES. 

Has conscience anj^ place in art? When Corot said, 
about his own picture, "Now I must make some air 
among the branches for the birds to fly through," was 
it not a just intent ? Wlien cauglit with his comrades 
in a storm, he said, " Let us go in-doors and paint, then 
we can make what weather we please," was there no 
moral sense for improving the time ? The truth of his- 
tory, as well as the requisitions of art, suffers not the 
tragic in its pictured drama to be quite left out among 
its shows of delight. "Crown of Thorns," "Cal- 
vary," "Descent from the Cross," and "Entombment," 
as well as "Annunciation," " Conception," and " Resur- 
rection," must have place. " Laocoon " and the " Greek 
Slave" the chisel must give us, with the "Mercury" 
and "Apollo." Beethoven, in music, must add an 
iron string to Mozart's soft and silken chords. My 
friend objects to Goethe's " Faust" as a painful book, 
and to Browning's ' ' Paracelsus " as a wolfish plot ; but 
the poets had to write their veracious tales. 

One modern people seems especiall}' chosen to minis- 
ter to our hunger and thirst for art. A national genius 
for it belongs to the French alone. "In the bellow- 
ing of battle," says the Roman historian, "the laws 
are dumb." But, despite war and cholera, wasted 
vineyards and inundated streams, how these modern 
Gauls, descendants of the old Romans, will play and 
paint ! If the Asiatic plague comes, they set it as an 
actor on the stage. Gay and beautiful France, we, as 
in compassion for a butterfly, folk, call their land. But 
their thin booth stands solid as Cyclopean architecture, 
or like a Coliseum in ever}^ town. The sketchers from 
their studios swarm to the crisis of everj^ scene. They 



ART. 137 

make bee-lines to Cordillera ranges, to Chinese famines, 
volcanic eruptions, and dead popes. The Illustration^ 
a newspaper in Paris, will have our civil war and the 
last rojal progress in India on its luminous page, and 
relate all contemporar}' annals with a photographer's 
report and an etcher's tool. Prussian troops may bom- 
bard their city, and they will show in sun-pictures of 
rent walls what the cannons do. During the German 
siege Parisian scientists made their calculations, schol- 
ars carried on their peaceful discussions, and within 
the military parallels artists chalked out their quite 
different lines, while soldiers bravel}^ manned and 
defended the walls ; and the light-hearted, wonderful 
people, that keep their footing in an earthquake and 
make merry with death, when the conflict ceases and 
the fine is imposed, step politely forth, and in their two 
hands of industry- and economy bring to their astonished 
foe the indemnity which was their cruel tax, and which 
German improvidence fails to turn into expected wealth. 
Not from vineyard and silk-factor}', or trade and com- 
merce alone, but from the beaut^'-loving skill to turn 
cheap material to attractive uses, and from the pictures 
that convert A^alues into enormous multiplicands, their 
resources come, making for them as for all a benedic- 
tion of art. Frugal to consume and copious to produce 
what civilization must have of a finer food ; with a pro- 
fusion on their sunny soil of that light which Taw&t flood 
the canvas, as Thomas Couture said, they have for work 
each day of the year. How complete is the explana- 
tion, in their Briarean dexterit}', of their amazing thrift ! 
What a mistake if they do not put their future glory 
in bloodless conquests alone ! As a manufacturer, mu- 



138 PRINCIPLES. 

sician, comedian, entertainer, child or set of children, 
born democrat, — leaving behind her armed head, and 
strnggiing into a republic at last, — France will unlearn 
strife, and become, as nature means, a garden and con- 
servatory where all other tribes shall go to school. 

Man's permanent necessitj' is art. An acre of ground 
will support a family ; but there is a mute craving which 
corn and wheat cannot satisfy and no science can 
appease, albeit in our daj^ the imaginative appetite is 
the last to open its mouth. What volumes of meaning a 
creative artist will condense on a single cloth or wooden 
page ! How many words of history are supplied, or, 
like bank-notes, cancelled, in Turner's "Slave-Ship"! 
That laboring bark, tossed in the trough of the sea, was 
our American ship of state. Our confused politics were 
those swirling waves, and our retribution was in that 
yawning deep. The picture is criticised as abnormal ; 
but, unnatural or supernatural, wh}' should not that 
painted heaving main be contrary to nature, as our 
evil sj'stem or an}^ English slavery was? So all sorts 
of monstrous and impossible fishes swarm in the wa- 
ter}^ chasm to devour. The miraculous billows will 
not swallow even the iron fetters, but vomit them back 
among the foaming crests, and make the cruel links cry 
from the ocean, like Abel's blood from the ground. 
What bottom have the wasteful caverns to allow such 
dreadful offences to sink? At what port of safety 
can a vessel arrive so ' ' rigged with curses and built In 
the echpse" ? Is not the cargo too heav}^ for an}^ craft? 
Shall not birds of prey peck at the carcase, for which 
fierce jaws oj^en below ? What but doom on iniquity 
would the artist depict ? Yet in his fancy it is no eter- 



ART. 139 

nal thing, but as limited as it is dire. The tempest, 
horrid phantom, a fugitive in fright, — as in a moment, 
shall blow awa3\ Through a rift in the black and blood- 
stained clouds shoots the steady shaft of hght, to scat- 
ter, like a proclaimed emancipation, the dark. Its gleam 
shall edge the horizon and fill the sky. The clearing 
shall be a Christian redemption, not a Greek fate. We 
have lightened the ship by throwing over the chains 
and not the slave, who helps to work her and his passage 
now. 

Such pictures as Turner's show that when England 
flowers in literature or art, though she blossom not all 
over like France, it is 3'et with expansion more splen- 
did and tough. But she has scarce such a cluster of 
artists as Millet, Corot, and Couture with his classic 
heads, part of whose picture of the "Volunteers of 
1792 " has come to us to illustrate the strength more 
than the finish of his style. We see at once in the two 
figures that home is behind and the battle before. They 
are not conscripts, but willing offerings. What in 
reality they have left struggles with what in imagina- 
tion thej^ go to, in their mind. One of them, drooping, 
has flung his arms about the other for support, and the 
second, as he sustains his comrade, lifts his own eyes 
to heaven, because, said the artist, "poor fellow, he 
knows not where else to look." Perhaps in no modern 
picture does a natural situation more suggest the ideal 
than in Mr. Couture's " Da3'-Dreams," in which a bo3', 
having laid his books in a strapped bundle on the 
bench, in a room open to the light, follows with rapt 
vision the bubbles he is blowing into the air. What 
breadth of prospect, height of hope, lustre of good cheer, 



140 PRINCIPLES. 

vista of accomplishment, and immortalitj^ for his plans, 
appear in the sport so familiar to childhood, in which 
time is annihilated, and stints of study are suspended 
and forgot ! No kitten playing with its tail was ever 
more happily occupied or utterly lost ; nor could unity 
be more perfectly combined with variety in an}^ scene. 
It is a masterpiece in the French style and Italian 
too ; for, as one of her historians has said, Gaul is the 
real though cisalpine Rome, an Italy transferred, and 
the old blood preserved yet refined, purged somewhat 
of that greed for aggrandizement which was so over- 
strained by the subtle Corsican, who, as Victor Hugo 
sa3's, with his wars wearied God. France will fulfil her 
better destiny if she beware of artifice while cultivating 
art. Scarce a French novel or play but introduces and 
justifies deceit ; and this signifies a civilization without 
root or depth of earth. " Great bloomers, but not 
hardy," said one of certain plausibly untruthful persons ; 
and some communities are social plants of this agreeable 
and unpromising type. 

For the masters in music we must cross the Ehine ; 
although the present writer dares not attempt to pay 
his own debt to this art, for all its refreshment and 
peace, lying so deep as it does in the universal mind. 
The whole air is one capacity for airs^ Lydian or Tyn- 
tsean ; the atmosphere is a potential concord and latent 
s^^mphony and slumbering h3'mn of praise, which every 
voice or viol, pipe or string, throat of bird, insect, or 
man, is but the means to arouse. Even when it is pro- 
voked to harshness and tortured into dissonance, dis- 
tance, as if it were an atmospheric repentance, eliminates 
discord, and softens, without rendering inaudible, the 



ART. 141 

roughest notes. In what sweetness come back the 
echoes of a braying horn among the hills ! It is said 
the Covenanters' rude songs in the Scotch Highlands 
became melodies indescribably winsome to travellers' 
ears afar. Historic philosophers are wont to call musi- 
cal nations weak politically, citing Italy and Germany 
as cases in point. Is it in spite, or at all in conse- 
quence of a musical spring in the mind, that Germany, 
twent}" years ago feeble as so man}' scattered sticks, 
has become the strongly bound fagot in JEsop's fable, 
and the so long oppressed and derided Italy a free 
kingdom, reacting on the papal sway? No religious 
or civil accusation will hold against art, of whatsoever 
sort. Any art, like any nature, ma}' be turned to a sen- 
sual purpose, but only b}" abuse. If Shakspeare tell 
us all art is but nature, we will answer all nature is 
but art ; and from the Fashioner of the world, in his 
own example, comes the summons of all our forge tive 
faculties to a serious though cheerful end. My friend, 
the music-teacher, hates to hear people sa}' of a concert 
how they enjoyed it ! His music is his religion, as to 
Jean Paul Richter a solemn strain suggested what he 
had never experienced nor should behold, a blessedness 
almost painful because too vast for hope. What a 
span from the guttural trumpet or high note of the 
tenor drum and scream of the fife stirring up the fra}', 
to the slow and soothing dirge that bears the dead sol- 
dier to his rest, and from anthems of worship to the 
twanging strings that lead on the lively dance ! How 
consoling, at the funeral, is a choir ! That is never 
quite sad which we can sing about. Love sings, faith 
sings, and sorrow sings as it is converted into joy. 



142 PKINCIPLES. 

Without his chorister in the tabernacle, how poorly the 
revivalist would fare, ill suited to a song as some of the 
dark old dogmas are ! What a river of God, full of 
water, runs in the fugues of Sebastian Bach ! How ce- 
lestial harmonies must have spilled over on Beethoven's 
inner ear ! What a lark at heaven's gate was Mozart, 
and how the oratorios of Haydn and Handel and Men- 
delssohn seem to continue some chorus of angels on 
high ! Paradise would not be believed in but for our 
snatches of their notes. Columbus knew the neighbor- 
hood of a continent by the floating weeds and a fra- 
grance in the air ; what we catch of a diviner color and 
odor " bej^ond the reaches of our souls" is proof that 
we coast the edges of another world. Amid doctrinal 
wrangles comes the all-reconciling psalm. I can sing 
Trinitarian doxologies in Orthodox companies, — all 
but the words ! A good voice is of no sect, but media- 
tor of all ; and the dull sermon or more tedious pra3'er, 
in many a village-church, is sanctified or atoned for by 
the fresh voices in the organ-loft, while the solemn 
pipes, by whose resonance they are surmounted and led, 
seem to furnish vernacular language and a mother- 
tongue to the reverent soul. 

Hearing supplements vision ; for while the eye is a 
rolling and too often unfixed and restless orb, the ear is 
an aperture and open door. Let us not only chant or 
play faithfully what is set down in the score, but mod- 
ulate the inflections of our daily speech till there shall 
be but cordial invitation and gracious welcome, with no 
yelling in the house, and children's voices be trained 
into tune. Some intonations instinct with tenderness 
strike more kindly and stay longer in the bosom's audi- 



ART. 143 

ence-chamber than aii}^ tremolo or sostenuto of Braham or 
Malibrau. Not Webster's clarion or Everett's violin or 
Kemble's flute-note resounds in my ear like the uncon- 
sciously intoned affection of some young maiden or man, 
half ashamed or unawares. 

But from anj' art can the dark and dreadful side of 
life be left out? The thunder intrudes in the " Pastoral 
Symphony," and in the Last Supper Judas darkens 
the door. The unspeakable Turk challenges yet for his 
crooked cimeter a needful task. What a gap in nature 
would be made by the instant extinction of violent pas- 
sions or the sudden removal of wild beasts ! It would be 
like the rise and retreat of that huge hore into which sub- 
marine earthquakes urge the waves, and would compel 
immediate alteration of every constitution and human 
law. How to arrange or govern or understand we 
should no longer know. Charit}' let us have. If we 
would be able to describe, we must not judge, save that 
the Lord means something in all he makes ; nor denounce 
qualities that differ from ours, like some besotted fashion- 
ist that roars against Mohammedan or Mongolian cos- 
tume. What are all our notions but the dress of our 
minds ? 

There is a prejudice of fanatics that art is a cold 
business and the artist a cold man as he bends so 
calmly and unexcitedly to his patient task. " Goethe," 
says some sentimental critic, '^ was a piece of ice," and 
Shakspeare surveys the unfolding of dire situations 
with what a passionless eye \ But is it a virtue to culti- 
vate tears? " Genius burns, but does not weep." Is 
the actor or author heartless and indifferent because he 
keeps his temper, as he keeps a fire, under control? 



144 PRINCIPLES. 

In the chemic arts flames are used of an intensity supe- 
rior to that which consumes a building or cracks the 
marble and melts the iron in the conflagration of a 
town ; but naphtha and blow-pipe and nitro-glj^cerine 
and bottled lightning are held to service. The}' are the 
only sort of unemancipated slaves. But we are mas- 
tered by a careless candle, or an overset kerosene-lamp, 
or a spark that escapes from a tinder-box or match. If 
we would know what caloric is, we go to the blacksmith 
and white-smith, not to a flustered cook or burnt child. 
If we would understand intellectual heat, we run not 
after the blazing straw or bonfire of some short-lived 
romance, but to the anvils where scholars and poets 
forge their enduring thoughts. Are ^schjius and 
Dante pitiless because they will not spoil with cheap 
fortunes the dignit}^ of their characters and the consist- 
ency of their plots ? The}" would lose nature in losing 
poise. A blaze is dissipation of warmth. Poets are 
tide-waiters upon God. Like becalmed vessels, they 
look for a breeze. We must be slow that we may be 
swift. Many persons are impatient of the tardy evolu- 
tion of humanity, and accuse Providence of being indif- 
ferent and cold. Does God indeed see and hear, that 
the thunder of his wrath at iniquity delays to strike ? 
But his eye and ear include all, sinner and saint ; and 
his interpreters are like himself. 

The most ardent of men in my memor}^ was a Metho- 
dist preacher, who was an artist too. A transcendent 
enthusiast, considering his topics like red-hot spikes 
which another could not hold, 3'et no kindling on the 
hearth and no northern aurora or crinkling flash in the 
cloud ever described the line of beauty more truly than 



ART. 145 

the sallies of his speech, which was not from his mouth 
alone, but in eveiy motion and feature of his frame and 
face. One da}', without rising from his seat at the table, 
this consummate performer, who never had an}'- train- 
ing for the stage, described to the company a spinning 
dervish. Into the character he was himself trans- 
formed ; and we, who looked and listened, were trans- 
ported to the East, or rather the strange Oriental figure 
was imported into the room. In what amazing gesture 
and gyration the forms of a Christian piet}' were for the 
moment lost or laid aside as so much frippery from a 
wardrobe, while the sense of the Infinite in another re- 
ligion was shown ! We beheld as in a mirror the wild 
prophet of the desert, as though on those farther than 
California sand-lots, or rising through the floor. But 
Arab or Yankee, it mattered not which to this clerical 
performer's versatile skill. In a certain political cam- 
paign one of our Eastern men was so assured of his 
party's success that he engaged to trundle a barrel of 
apples on a wheelbarrow some thirt}' miles to Boston 
in case of its defeat ; and he actuall}- both incurred and 
himself executed the penalt}', on losing his singular bet. 
The Bethel preacher, to whose histrionic ability I refer, 
was not absent when that singular freight came along 
the street ; and more than a score of 3'ears has not 
dimmed the Advidness of his account at the time. The 
livel}' expectation of the grotesque figure about to 
come had lined with spectators the long and crooked 
route. " Young men and maidens, old men and chil- 
dren," crowded the squares, planted themselves at the 
corners of ever}' avenue, hung on the fences, peered over 
the brick walls, and thrust their heads out of the win- 

10 



146 PRINCIPLES. 

dows, each face aglow with the humor of the occasion. 
The city wore, or was^ one universal smile. Its popu- 
lation had melted into sympathy for once. It had be- 
come an expectant theatre. At last " a little man with 
oakum whiskers " pushed his wheel, tugging at the bent 
handles, through the throng. From the amusing situa- 
tion came a fellowship whose ties no solemn sermon 
could weave ; and the novel communion administered 
was pictured in tone and gesture, such as might be 
envied by Kean or Garrick or any star on the stage, by 
our transcendent mime. In this great actor, in or out of 
the desk, was no mimicry or painstaking imitation of the 
signs of feeling, as the critics questioned whether Ra- 
chel did not display. The elder Booth was no more 
" to the manner born," nor touched perfection closer in 
every detail. At the festival of an order of believers 
not his own, being invited to speak, he told of his visit 
to Virginia, where he was born, — his great wish being 
to see " Little Johnny," with whom he had played as a 
boy. Much he inquired and long he hunted for his 
mate, but in vain. " Little Johnny" no one seemed to 
know. Still he urged his pursuit, inquired of all the 
folks, entered into particulars about the famil}" and the 
early circumstances of his own connection with it, till 
finally ' ' Little Johnny " was actuall}' brought in — not 
the brisk, rosy lad he remembered, but an aged, gray- 
haired, stooping, and trembling veteran — to stand by 
his side ; and he found he himself was no longer a boy. 
How the dramatic representation filled the hall, and 
how the thousand persons in it gazed all together while 
they heard ! The Unitarian president with his support- 
ing dignitaries had disappeared in the spectators and 



AKT. 147 

the spectacle. He, the sole actor, that strode as if alone 
on the platform, was the entire troupe he depicted, — 
old man, "Little Johnn}'," and himself. Had the wall 
behind, like that of Belshazzar's palace, blazed into 
letters of fate under a miraculous hand, the sight could 
not have been more real to the eye. 

The exhaustion that followed on such exhibitions as 
I but faintly hint was demonstration how the soul may 
be exercised by what is called fiction more profoundly 
than by any fact. Anton Rubinstein told me his life 
was habitual torture, with onl}- gleaming intervals of 
joy ; so overwrought was he b}' the double genius to 
compose and perform, till he was read}' to accuse the 
heavens of injustice because the}' would not tell him 
which of the two to do. If the artist be cold, it is 
because he shivers at the awful shapes that beckon in 
his vision to be introduced on earth. So only is Bal- 
zac, George Eliot, or George Sand cool. The}' are not 
like glass that lets through a sunbeam, or the plate that 
takes the impression of a photograph, or the telescope 
that reports a star. These revealers are consubstantial 
with the revelation they make. But they, the revealers, 
must not be swept away. How could they measure 
what they were mastered by ? They must wrestle, like 
Jacob, until dawn, and not be thrown, though their 
"thigh be out of joint"! The poet Horace says we 
must weep first if we would make others weep. But 
we must not be dissolved, drowned in, or choked by our 
tears. If the preachers cry, and do not articulate, we 
have a baby at home who can do that ! The dramatist 
may pity the victim as he conducts him to doom, but 
he cannot stop to have compassion on himself. He may 



148 PRINCIPLES. 

despise the villain he cannot afford to dest^03^ Said a 
certain actor in a whisper to one that supported him in 
the pla}', " I am feeling too much to perform m}" part." 
To perform is alwa3's, and to give way or give up is 
never, the business in hand, be our calling or profession 
to set forth a scene, assist at a tragedj' in real life, warn 
or persuade, console or heal. The surgeon can have 
onl}^ a surgical smile or tear.. If the artist seem icj^ 
it is because he is disinterested; and his "frost," in 
Milton's phrase, "performs the effect of fire." Ary 
Scheffer sketches Dante's scene in the " Inferno," where 
Dante and Virgil together look on the whirl of retribu- 
tion in which, as in a rolhng cloud, Francesca di Rimini 
with her lover is involved. How calm and unmoved as 
marble statues the poets appear, standing motionless 
to see the judgment of God ! Deep thought stills us, 
as Michael Angelo's figure called the "Thinker" shows. 
Equally quiet are we under intense feeling. Words- 
worth had " thoughts too deep for tears." 

The arts, like the old muses or furies, are sisters, 
yet they cannot be transformed into each other. When 
a lady requested Mendelssohn to put certain poetic 
lines into a musical score, he refused, not because tones 
are less definite, but, as he said, more so than words. 
That all the arts, including nature, the divine and ever- 
lasting one, have a common root, is evident from the 
fact that we speak of a beautiful picture, voice, speech, 
manner, essa}', scene, or expression, not doubting the 
equal appropriateness of the term to all these things, 
though they cannot be converted into each other like 
electricity, magnetism, light, and heat. 

The objection of piety to art only accuses piety, if 



ART. 149 

piety honor that Bible which tells of Hiram and Tubal 
with their brass vessels and Paul at his tent-making, 
which preaches the beautj^ of holiness, and is itself of 
all our performance only the programme. The artisan, 
more than the artist proper, wins both our reward and 
our respect. The latter among us is poor to a prov- 
erb, in more than one sense, of reputation as well as 
pocket. Painter or sculptor, what an unnecessary per- 
son he is, dealing at best in a luxury, not a necessity of 
life ! The maiden that makes a pretty face an excuse 
for sloth and expensive dress of silks and rings is 
called, with some irony, the ornament of the family ; 
and the supreme artist that embalms and immortalizes 
what is best of nature and man, in color and form, can- 
vas and stone, has in general societ\" less standing and 
acceptance than the great banker, railway-builder, 
manufacturer, or engineer. As the Japanese put the 
milkman above the merchant, so in this country the 
name of the successful stock-speculator is blown farther 
from the trumpet of fame than that of the picture-maker, 
whom we patronize or dispense with as we please. 
How few have heard of Stuart the portrait-painter, 
compared with the millions that know about Stewart the 
millionnaire ! Washington Allston or Cornelius Vander- 
bilt, — which in our cities and in our history passes for 
the greater name? Against the common disparaghig 
judgment let me show the bearing of art on the charac- 
ter and welfare of the community. 

It is, first, a consolation and joy in our eager, toiling, 
bargain-driving, hurried, nerve-wearing, and insanity- 
producing American life. What a pregnant sketch 
of an influence to soothe and make glad we have 



150 PKINCIPLES. 

to this point in the Acts of the Apostles ! A born 
cripple is laid daily at the ' ' Gate of the Temple called 
Beautiful." As in reading we huhy on to the miracle 
of healing reported as done b}^ Peter, we forget to ask 
why and for what purpose every morning the lame 
man was carried to that spot. For the same reason, 
was it not, that the unfortunate appeal to us in the 
market and at the corner of the street, because he 
would be there in the current and concourse of the pop- 
ulation, particularly that throng among which would be 
the greatest number of such as miglit be inclined to 
charity. But what lame man, blind man, or beggar of 
an}^ sort, would take his station, on a week-da}^ or an}^ 
day, on the granite or marble steps of a New York or 
Boston sanctuarj^? He would find nobody there stop- 
ping to help him or even to hear his tale. He would 
be quite out of the stream of passers-by. Wh}^ was he 
in it near Solomon's Porch at Jerusalem? Because the 
Jews frequented their house of praise, their place of 
praj^er, and it was a meeting-house indeed ; because 
they worshipped God with a joint homage which many 
so-called Christians, that despise and class them 
with heathens, regularly omit ; because there was more 
love of beauty and fondness for art, the minister of 
beauty, among those Hebrews whom we turn the cold 
shoulder to and fancy we have left so far behind, than 
among us of the Yankee breed ; because Judaea in- 
herited a love and taste for what charms the eye 
and soothes the soul, and because, too, the spirit of 
Greece had got into Judaea ; because they had time 
to pause and peacefully survey the glory of the edifice, 
as they were entering, and were not, in that better age 



ART. 151 

of Israel, bitten with this our American tarantula of 
the greed of gain, which, like an evil humor, or skin 
disease once contracted, itches and torments its victim 
to his d3'ing da}', and leaves his safe or chest to the 
beaks and claws of his heirs ; because that one gate 
called Beautiful, made of the Corinthian brass, which, 
delicatel}" wrought, had a price and dignitj', the historian 
tells us, superior to gold, drew the majority' of the quiet 
procession to the sacred shrine ; and because, more- 
over, the poor man with his congenital defect found not 
only a convenience and sustenance in the alms which 
he solicited, but also a solace for his disabilitj- and pain, 
as he whiled awa}' the time in gazing at those pillars in 
their proportions and polish so handsome and grateful 
to the e3'e. 

Have we no deeper than a bodih' deficienc}' or mal- 
ady, to be likewise supplied or assuaged b}' beauty of 
art in that pictorial allurement, which is more effectual 
than any arch or lintel or carved column to make us 
forget our want or distress ? When we see a man limp- 
ing along the street with a crutch or wooden leg, we 
pity him for his misfortune, we grudge the accident — 
some fall or blow, coupling of the cars or bullet in the 
wars — that maimed his living member or clove it swiftl}' 
awa}'. Is there in us no cause, from an undeveloped or 
mutilated mind, for sorer lament, and calling for a 
more benignant cure, from such a gracious influence as 
divine beauty in art? If we pass over a noble scene, 
natural or represented b}' the brush, and disparage the 
exquisite portraiture as of no account ; if we discourage 
art-culture in the community as of no ethical or spirit- 
ual worth, — our mental constitution is lacking, if not 



152 PRINCIPLES. 

sick. What are the satisfactions and consolations of 
such as care not for that beauty in which God has 
wrapped the world, in order that his children might 
know his essence, and both admire and copy his 
work? Heavy and costly dinners, to eat and drink and 
smoke, to perfume and adorn the person, to drive and 
clothe and sail? 

But not only or mainly to assuage trouble or substi- 
tute higher pleasure, not only as an opiate or anti- 
dote, not only as contemplative but also as creative, 
does art claim our regard. Thousands looked at " the 
Beautiful Gate of the Temple ; " but one designed and 
made it, and had in it the chief honor and benefit. 
Somehow we should all be artists after God, whose art 
is all we are and see. Something we should all design 
and make for others' advantage and delight and the un- 
folding of our own powers. The constructive and creative 
faculty is more or less in us all ; else wh}^ have we this 
hand.? Are its uses exhausted in putting on our clothes, 
carrying food to our mouth, grasping another hand, 
bearing arms in war-time, or being doubled up into a 
fist, — this wonderful hand, which from the world's foun- 
dation and crude substance makes its own tools, directs 
the most delicate instruments of science, and rules the 
heaviest machines ? It signifies the inmost soul with a 
gesture, and it also sows and reaps, hoists the rope and 
holds the helm, receives the new-born babe and la3's 
out the dead, and should not itself be cold and still be- 
fore it has left for others' welfare some memorial in the 
world. The e3'e is a nobler sense than touch, but the 
eye is an idler without the executive hand. 

But, one sa3's, I cannot do any thing in the way of 



ART. 153 

art. I cannot paint, or model, or mould, or build, or 
contrive a chest of drawers, or even drive a nail. I 
have no hand to lend or give ! Sometimes, from ob- 
structed circulation, the hand or foot is, as we sa}', 
asleep while the rest of the body is wide awake. If we 
do not a stroke or. stitch of work, our hand, in all that 
makes the virtue and glory of it, is asleep all the time. 
Man}^ a hand is unused because the owner has got 
ahead and is forehanded, and can leave to his less pros- 
perous fellows what he considers lower pursuits. But, 
as not a soul is born without this double-handed pro- 
vision, industrial education is a just claimant that has 
its perfect triumph but postponed to a better age. 
Meantime, leaving aside manual accomplishment in all 
its low or lofty range, there is a want of meaning, an 
awkward, ugly deformit}', a clums}' managing, or else a 
beautiful art, in every human hand. If our senses be 
exercised spiritually, we discern in every man or woman 
whether the}' have a hand of bount}' and service, or one 
close and cruel and mean. Fair or unfair handling is 
the tale composed b}' all these fingers, and writ on every 
palm. To do is more than to know. 

But what, in its peculiar, proud, and pictorial sense, 
is the use of art ? What but a poor, half-successful at- 
tempt to imitate nature is it at best? Wh}" care for this 
small fragment and petty mimicry of a landscape framed 
and hung on the wall, when we have the whole glorious 
and vast original out of doors ? If we think it a mere 
copy or fac-simile or repetition of nature, we misun- 
derstand art. The artist is a soul, an observing, sensi- 
tive, selecting intelligence, reproducing what charms 
him in another form, diverse from and substantially 



154 PRINCIPLES. 

adding to the natural scene. Topography or photography 
is not art. With the same imagination and feeling we 
rejoice in both nature and art. But in a picture are 
alwaj's three elements, — nature, art, and the artist, or 
the way he is touched by what he sees. As much as a 
tent pitched, or as the old patriarch himself, adds to the 
wilderness, or a procession to the street, or a great 
gathering in every cit}^. East or West, to the now peace- 
ful march through the land of the hero of our civil war, 
so much genius, which is sensibilit}" and effort com- 
bined, adds to the situation it descries, conceives, and 
portra3's. It celebrates the theme it paints. It chooses 
from nature. It tells us what is admirable and lovel}', 
in its admiration and love. It emphasizes and calls us 
to notice that which stirs its own adoration and delight. 
As the Fourth of July differs from another day, though the 
same earth be underfoot and the same heaven overhead, 
so does a canvas from the wide waste of things. Though 
purged of all egotism or individualism, there is a strong 
personality in ever}^ genuine production of the chisel or 
the brush. We peruse with interest the lives of great 
men. But we shall find the biographj^ and autobiogra- 
phy of Michael Angelo, not in any words written con- 
cerning him, not even in his own, so much as in the 
awful and beautiful ceiling of the Sistine Chapel ; in 
his figure of Moses and the "Creation of Adam;" in 
the "Thinker," so called; in his sublime portraitures 
of the "Separation of Light from Darkness," and of 
"Night and Da}^," that bring us face to face with the 
Creator of the world. No doubt will remain how he 
thought and felt and wrought. Is not that all there is 
of any man? Does the heaven on earth of the French 



ART. 155 

Corot's landscapes not let 3'ou into his heart? Is any 
question left of Millet's humanit}', after 3'ou have seen 
what his pencil tells of French peasant life ? 

True art is not a trifling, superficial, and inconsider- 
able adjunct to the leisure of our life, — an entertainment 
for which we are to give a compliment, as we bow to a 
stranger and pass b}^ If roads and ships and telegraphs 
and tunnels through the hills are its grosser demonstra- 
tions, appreciated by all, the picture and statue are to 
what is immortal in us how much more precious and 
fine ! If I must, for m}^ instruction, learn dead lan- 
guages and turn over the leaves of Gibbon and Hume, 
I shall not overlook art's tongues and narratives alive. 
By my fatigue, as I retire, I know I have been exercised 
and taught as much in the galleries as in the books. 
Our art is imperfect, as it has man}' a step forward to 
take, and to make the good and beautiful more largely 
its theme, leaving the evil or painful, as in dying or 
dead men or game, whicli is so ephemeral, proportionally 
out. But such a subject as that " Good Samaritan," on 
the Public Garden, with his ether for mortal anguish, 
and as that just-inaugurated "Emancipation Group," 
on the Square yonder, must not only affect but refine 
and exalt the common mind, as a sort of silent and in- 
cessant sermon and exhortation to merc3\ I met an un- 
shaved, coarsely dressed, and not ver}' lately- washed 
fellow-citizen, who had stopped to gaze with me at the 
Abraham Lincoln, in bronze, meeting with his downcast 
eye the upward glance of the unfettered slave. " I have 
no fault to find with that," he said ; " and, sure as you 
are alive, it will do good." It had to him ! 

Art is the jubilee of nature ; and an art-museum is 



156 PRINCIPLES. 

the place of permanent sessions where it is held, being 
itself a monumGntal, ever-increasing dividend of charity 
from many a merchant's cargo, tradesman's sales, pro- 
fessional man's salary, and scholar's fee, to set up a 
new gospel for the poor, two days every week, " with- 
out mone}^ and without price," and to open a bible 
of beauty, V3'ing with that of truth, to call men from 
debasing pleasures of lazy hours to the indulgence of 
appetites that do not injure but exalt. 



LOVE. 157 



VI. 

LOVE. 

THE tragedy of life is that a feeling promising to be 
eternal sliould so quickly pass. The Spanish 
Lola Montes represents a gentleman, uneasy under the 
sting of a new affection, saying to himself as a consola- 
tion derived from former experience, " It will not last." 
The new German philosophy tells us, love is but the 
species wishing to continue and laying hold of the indi- 
viduals as its instruments, cheating them with illusor}^ ex- 
pectations of happiness the flesh cannot ^ield ; while our 
American poet tells us that the fairy which the virgin 
maid seems to be is lost in the " gentle wife," that the 
man must surrender his beloved at her faintest surmise 
of joy in another person, and that the pain which has no 
balm is when love loses the conjpanionship of thought 
which he calls " the muse." Science, going down 
meantime to the lowest unions of insect, bird, and beast, 
finds in oflspring the lovers' bond, — how transient with 
the animal, but more lasting with man ! Into the midst 
of man}" fond hopes, defeated and broken vows, and 
mutual relations tolerated with ill-disguised disgust, 
the outward alliance checkmated with inward repulse, 
stalks the spectre of a sexual independence, or free love, 
maintained on principle and carried out in practice, to 
transform into assumed virtue what our fathers and our 



158 PRINCIPLES. 

Scriptures pronounce a vice. Let us ask how love 
once felt may be confirmed. 

First, b}^ service. We love what we labor for, though 
but a tree we plant or a wall we build. How dear the 
invalid for whom we care, the ailing partner or the 
crippled child ! What we give binds us, not what we 
receive. How fast must be God's tie with all his crea- 
tures ! When in the simple story we read that ' ' hav- 
ing loved his own," Jesus " loved them unto the end," 
do we reflect out of what need to minister to their igno- 
rance and to bear with their infirmities his interest arose ? 
Had it lived on the returns, how soon it must have 
starved ! Well does helpmate denote the closest link. 
Redoubled attention must come to the rescue when the 
first flush of transport fades and the j^outhful joy ebbs : 
and they will fix a better color and fill any void. Love 
exists for those between whom is no boundary. Such 
persons commune indeed, while the Lord's Supper is but 
the service of communion. The bliss comes of being 
delivered from loneliness or feeling lonesome in the 
world ; and as love consists in a blended existence, no 
solitude is possible while it endures, and it is literally 
true that death has no power to part. How perpetuate 
this fusion in which, like those rivers whose individuality 
is scarce traceable while their currents mix, husband 
and wife are one ? By waiting on each other with that 
perpetual aid which taking each other by the arm and 
breaking bread together express. A woman for whom 
I spoke the marriage-vows after a year sought a divorce. 
" Did you love the man when yo\i were first joined with 
him?" I asked. '' Indeed, I did," was the reply. How 
but by gradually abated service, turning to neglect, were 
caresses at last exchanged for blows ? 



LOVE. 159 

But beneath this handiwork of service lies justice, 
which we think due to the household as a unit and from 
without, heedless of its dearer import between the mem- 
bers, and which we reckon in dollars and cents while 
we overlook its deeper score of motives on the tables of 
the heart. No unfairness of an opponent strikes so 
hard, pierces so sore, and refuses so long to be healed 
as that of the one most familiar, whose head is on our 
breast. We can defend ourselves against a foe ; but 
they whom inveterate fondness has made part of our- 
selves are too close for us either to ward or answer the 
stroke. I fear not the criticism of the newspaper, but 
that of the heart, and the censorship by m^' side of such 
as know me outweighs all other blame. Even good- 
humored banter, that questions the purit}' of our designs, 
should be sparing from the lips we daily kiss. Equity 
is scant enough in the world, whose politics, business, 
and religion are but diverse modes of war ; and perfect 
honor is so rare that we scarce need to have the dis- 
paragement pursue us to our fireside and board, like a 
billow that onl}^ diminishes its volume as it rolls to dash 
its serpentine folds in venomous fury on the shore ; 
while no delight is more exquisite to 3'oung and old than 
to have our dispositions and aims righth' and generously 
esteemed. The ship, after offing, needs repairs in port. 
Would 3'ou still mutuallj' love, rectif}' at home the beam, 
biassed by gusts on the open sea of life. 

Trust is, moreover, needful, that this manna of love 
may keep ; trust being justice raised to the highest 
power, and holding more of the heart than such faith 
as has intellectual propositions for its base. If justice 
appreciates what another has done or meant in the past, 



160 PRINCIPLES. 

trust confides present and future to his hands and can- 
not conceive of his ever doing or intending ill. It sells 
him its whole estate and takes no securit}'. Mortgage 
implies liability to die, and love trusts because it ignores 
death. There is such a thrill of pleasure, exceeding 
that which any fondness can impart, in our friend's rest 
and repose in our righteous purpose toward him ; and 
it so puts us on our honor, which is dearer than any 
person can be to the soul, that we cannot help thinking 
in his children's trust in him God himself must be blest. 
But just in the same proportion distrust is offence and 
woe. It is a sp}" ; and we alienate those whom we watch 
by our emissaries dogging their steps, opening their 
letters, or searching their drawers with our hands, or 
cross-questioning them as to whom the}' saw, what they 
said, or whither the}' went and came ! A jealous glance, 
a suspicious ej^e upon us, is the dagger whose thrust kills 
love. Peering observation is a fetter in the air, heavier 
than the iron chain for a slave ; and though slave be some- 
times a lover's name, no man or woman is permanently 
inclined to barter liberty for the love which distrust kills. 
Affection ma}'' wish to live despite insult, and in a grand 
sense it may survive treachery ; but the peculiar tender- 
ness of a personal intimacy cannot defend itself against 
and survive continual stabs of doubt, which is heart- 
murder and puts to actual death. A great deal of such 
slaying is not reckoned as a- crime on any criminal code. 
When one expires we would always know the cause ; but 
the disease is often too obscure for any inquest to as- 
certain. O man or woman, tormentor with your daily 
envious questions and peevish pricks of the one you 
swore to cherish as j'our own flesh, this sensitive object 



LOVE. 161 

for which j'our tongue is a lash and 3'our eye a sword, 
this living target of your wrath and scorn, will draw the 
last breath some time, and then you will have nothing to 
expend your temper on, or brace 3-ourself against when 
you are nervous ! Your hungr}- passions will lose their 
habitual food. You will have — how often I have seen 
it ! — a great funeral ; and the flowers laboriously 
wrought by some hired florist, expert for obsequies, 
will excite much admiring remark. But I, who know 
something of 3'our historj^, shall have my attention 
drawn rather to the interwoven crosses and the broken 
harp-strings than to the wreaths or crowns ! In the 
mournful hush, or while rises the solemn pra3'er, the 
inward witness is plain with 3'ou, and in its silence it 
sa3's. As to the real malad3' in this case, the doctor in 
his statement has made a mistake ! It was deeper 
than fever or cancer, consumption or paral3'tic stroke ! 
Your unkiudness made the decease premature ; your 
sharp tongue was the needle that stitched ever3' thread 
in that shroud ; 3'our anger drove ever3' nail in that 
coflin ; 3'our exactions robbed that poor corse of half 
its rightful 3^ears, and put a full moiety' of the misery 
into all the days of strength and motion with 3'ou it 
had. "With man3' of us it has not come to that 3'et. 
Let us prevent such noiseless sentence, which is the 
verdict of God ! Be not undertakers in 3'our own 
houses for 3-our own kith and kin. The sexton is 
sometimes a sham, and does but the external and 
ceremonial part. B3' those that seem to lament the 
departure the burial is made ! We do not think of 
this when our env3^ to our fellows makes things hard 
and rough. We file on their nerves, and it does not 

11 



162 PBINCIPLES. 

enter our mind that we are going to file them utterly 
awa}'. Nevertheless are we all in each other's hands 
to thrive or to pine, and as we bless or curse to 
lengthen or shorten the mortal career. We think by 
animadversions to correct our companions' faults. But 
distrust never created an atom of virtue since the foun- 
dation of the world, while those we associate with tend 
to the nobility which we manifest and expect, as planets 
gravitate to the sun. The saddest sign in the shop- 
door is that familiar placard, "No Trust." Over our 
threshold be it never inscribed ! It means no peace, 
harmony, or continuing love. 

But still, furthermore, love must be kept bj^ that sincer- 
ity which dispenses with all necessity for inquisition, and 
is the ground of trust. Sure as the sleuth-hound scents 
the beast, its natural enemy, in the hole however hid, 
so every human covert invites scrutiny, the stricter the 
more the burrower is near by. But sincerity must not 
be overstrained or misunderstood. It consists in my 
freely communicating to you whatever facts, being my 
property, are by our mutual relations made also yours ; 
not in admitting into others' secrets in my possession 
your intrusive probe. You must not define my sincerity 
by your hankering curiosity. No two, owning each 
other, are absolute owners. We are held in a responsi- 
bility of manifold ties. Not to ask or wish to know 
what belongs to a third party who, should we divulge 
it, would be betrayed, is truer in friendship than that 
insisting to have every circumstance disclosed which is 
as false as any other form of selfish hate. Interroga- 
tion is meanness, and the grandeur of character is 
abstinence from inquiry. Forbearance to examine into 



LOVE. 163 

what jour partner withholds is the measure of your 
affectional worth. We must confess, truth is in our 
community the missing link. Sympathy is a drug, 
and ma}' become a poison if given in an overdose. 
Forgiveness we carry to excess, till the divine attribute 
becomes a human vice. Capital crimes have sunk from 
two hundred to two, — murder and treason ; and " we 
give the traitor an office and pardon the murderer out.'* 
Humanity, ever-growing, a modern virtue and not an- 
cient even in name, is the crown and glory of our time ; 
and the French Leroux, were he alive on earth, would 
see that his solidarity has come. But verity is, even 
for the shrine of compassion, a sacrifice too dear. 
Were one cliild to starve to death within its borders, 
the United States would be ashamed. But should we 
dare to poll the nation for a majoritj^ on the question 
whether to lie rather than tell what we think our inter- 
locutor should not claim. What big liars in pulpit and 
press and parlor and court ! When 3'our child tells a 
lie, saj's one, confess to it 3'ou have told a hundred ! 
Certainl}^ less on pity and commiseration than on can- 
dor should preaching now la}" its stress. But when 30U 
complain that your friend has not been frank with 3'ou, 
reflect whether 3'our indiscreet quer3' have not forced his 
closeness, as the clam and oyster, at the touch of 3'our 
stick, shut their valves.. Generosit}" opens the shell, 
and love is the mother of that truth which becomes 
in turn her bod3'-guard and defence. 

In fine, love is maintained not b3" uxorious doting, 
but by respect. Is the woman fond of expression and 
demonstration, not forgiving coldness, as George Eliot 
says, even when it is the mask of love? No token is 



164 PRINCIPLES. 

more precious to her than the respect which is the prem- 
ise of her personality. She resents being treated as a 
tool or a thing. No soft humiht^^ can satisfy her with 
being absorbed b}" the man. Let neither obliterate nor 
cancel, but bestow each the other ever afresh ! God's 
judgTnent-seat is in every breast, and we should be for- 
midable to each other as well as dear, never taking for 
granted that our chosen and devoted second self will be' 
S3'mpathizer and sharer with us in any sin, but recog- 
nizing the added conscience to make of our several 
souls no support in evil but a compound battery against 
wrong, and to find in our mate the other wing for our 
spiritual ascent. 

But in this list of conditions I must add that, after 
all, love is its own warrant, and is a self-preserver. 
When genuine, it scarce needs any foreign sta}^ Like 
some rich merchant, insuring his own ventures and 
taking out no policy for his ships, it is free from care, 
invents the aid, improvises and affords the solace and 
protection it needs. It keeps itself and keeps us with 
it, and predicts immortality while it blesses time ; for in 
its height and purity it can have no idea of extinction 
in its object or in itself. If it died, God would ! He 
is it. 

Love supplies its own fuel, lights its own fire, and is 
self-feeding like the sun. Does that flaming ball need a 
return from the planet that it ma}^ burn and shine still ? 
I am conscious of a sentiment alike independent of the 
objects by which it is occasioned, but not created or 
caused. So, as Shakspeare says, 'tis "far from, acci- 
dent." It needs not even to be known to the person 
on whom it is fixed ; and if, when tendered, it be not 



LOVE. 165 

reciprocated, it will not be withdrawn. It has, once 
arising, a character of necessity to abide, not living on 
favor of any sort from woman or man ; for God is alwa3's 
left, though the human creature be ungrateful as a gulf 
or cold as stone. Wives are with some multiplied, 
and mistresses forsaken, and the 3'outh or maiden once 
so gracious is, without a twinge, seen in another's arms ; 
but Dante's Beatrice or Michael Angelo's Vittoria Co- 
lonna, to all who know the secret and are worth}' to be 
initiated to degrees conferred b}^ no college or lodge, 
stands for a sentiment immortal as the soul which it 
thrills. Wh}', after long absence of many years, should 
a woman on her death-bed feel her heart glow for one 
with whom she has had, and can hope for, no terms in 
this or an}' world but of cordial respect ? Because there 
are emotions, sensual souls and unbelievers in virtue are 
strangers to, which outlast all opinions and calculations, 
and justif}' Balzac's definition that love is " a transfer of 
the me into another, without whom we cannot live." 
Therefore the heart, which disease eats into, only widens 
its room for the dear image that shall be carried away 
from the consuming of its mortal chambers, as we save 
the pictures from a burning house. Let me, in passing, 
mention some particular traits. 

First, love gives no account of itself. It acknowl- 
edges no higher court. It obe3's the summons to no 
tribunal of reason or conscience, far less of social custom 
or human law, as above itself. Doubtless, it is reason- 
able and right. There are expressions in this world to 
which it ma}' la}" no claim. In the living web which we 
call society, it will tear no thread. It-guards every real 
relation, for it weaves it, and unravels not its own work. 



166 PRINCIPLES. 

The soul of honor is its offspring, and nauglit dishon- 
orable can it do. 

Secondl}^, it is not a wish or an appetite. Were it 
not an absolute principle, it might be an infinite desire. 
But it craves nothing for itself. It is not recipiencj', 
but communication. Self-love is the cistern, but it is 
the spring. It emanates, whatever else may absorb. 
Hence its longevity is in its original activit3^ What is 
in the passive voice may pass away, and that alone is 
eternal whose cause of motion is in itself. Therefore, 
it is not enough to be loved, even b}^ God ; our title is 
not perfect unless we love Him. 

Thirdl}^, it consists not in, nor subsists upon, any 
expression, kiss, caress, or embrace. It depends not on 
giving or taking of signs. It is for ever conscious of 
inability to tell itself, or be told by those it possesses, 
as Deity cannot be expended or whollj^ manifest in any 
words or works. It chooses demonstrations which do not 
exhaust, but react and deepen. If it ebb in expression, 
it is like the ebbing of the sea for a speed}' flood, only 
washing some other shore till the tide shall turn. 

Fourthly, its peculiar delight is not in the pleasure, 
but in the self-forgetful life of its exercise. It is not the 
pride one ma}" have in being dear to another, but the 
balm to wounds that ble-ed in every breast. Unless it 
heal, it cannot be whole. The sacred oil flowed down 
Aaron's beard to the hem of his garment ; but no oint- 
ment for priest or king, and no alabaster-box for the 
Master's feet, ever bore the health and joy of its con- 
scious trickling through the bosom, and, like some subtle 
element we pour to search into slight crevices, finding 
out every sore place in our heart. Did Jesus have sore 



LOVE. 167 

places in his heart, which even the woman, who was a 
sinner, knew how to discover and soothe? Was he, 
who came to save the lost, by a lost sinner saved from 
pain himself ? Surel}' so onl}- can the situation be ex- 
plained ! What cared he for the precious paste or liquid 
on his limbs? Was it a smooth feeling on his skin b}' 
which he was moved ? Did the woman's fingers touch 
the tired feet with a relief no spikenard could bring? 
And was the washing of her tears which, whatever her 
fault, were holy water such as no cathedral-basin ever 
held, a cleansing for him whom the church declares to 
have had no share in Adam's fall? The woman's feel- 
ing was to him more than her weeping, or the costly 
fragrance of her gift, or soft clasp of hands with which 
it was bestowed. Is there any refreshment like that of 
being loved? Is there an}' inn for the wear}', wayfaring, 
and footsore traveller like that it opens? That wo- 
man knew there was a famishing which even Simon's 
board could not stay ! Woman's love is more disinter- 
ested than man's. Is not her very sin a self-sacrifice? 
Therefore the Christ's sentence on it was so mild ! Man 
is the aggressor. He solicits, and the woman yields. 
Solomon, as an expert, renders his judgment that the 
strange woman is a "deep ditch." He had often been in 
it, but the deepest and the last ditch was himself ! The 
woman withholds nothing when she has given her heart. 
Is she lost when she deliberates? Woe to the man, here 
and be3'ond the grave, who forces the weaker vessel to 
struggle with the more strong ! Rather than that this 
crime lie at my door, or have the groans of one deceived 
sister disturb my slumbers, or her blood cleave to the 
skirts of my garments, let any other transgression named 



168 PRINCIPLES. 

in the decalogue arise to stare me in the face at the judg- 
ment-day ! O tempter of the helpless, whose self-denial 
hides 3^our blame, all the courtesy with which through 
slow and constant pressure j^ou mislead is but veneered 
Tillany, the polish of the weapon with which 3^ou destro3^ 
Despising 3'our seductive arts, I denounce 3'ou on earth 
and summon y^ou to answer at the final bar. Your voice 
may be eloquent at the forum or in the sacred desk. 
You may add perjur3'' to lust, and meanness to both ; 
but the ring of false oaths will sink to a whisper when 
the time for equivocation and forswearing has gone b3^ 
I would not, as the Lord did not, excuse the feebler sex 
from the iniquit3^ they partake, but onl3^ plead that the 
other part3^ has in it the lion's share. 

Love as a sentiment has no limits. It is more than 
sleep for "hurt minds." Lazarus sta3's not in his 
tomb when he hears its voice. It is the chief virtue 
and great atonement for sin. " Her sins are forgiven, 
for she loved much," is the boldest sentence in the Bible, 
which we scarce dare read, and which it must have 
taken the Pharisee's breath awa3' to hear. Love is the 
source of purit3\ What were air and water as puri- 
fiers without fire ! The sun cleanses as well as creates ; 
and if love contract a stain, it will yet wash like cloth 
of gold. 

Lastly, love has no designs on its object. It has no 
designs at all. It exists for and in itself; and those it 
possesses exist for it. It is its own end, and the be- 
ginning and end of the creation. Therefore we cannot 
get round or be3^ond to master or measure it ; but it 
masters and measures us, and swears us to fidehty and 
sanctity, passing all social engagements and altar- vows, 



LOVE. 169 

administering an oath to bless and never hurt what is 
in its bond. As ma^'or of the city of God, it embodies 
every statute against what is injurious or unjust. The 
mountain-torrent is stronger a million-fold than man's 
hand, yet how his touch guides it in channels of beauty 
and use ! Duty makes of love not an overwhelming 
freshet, but a fertilizing stream. Very humble and fa- 
miliar are the tasks which our affections set. Rarely 
the}' call us to what is counted sublime ; of ten thou- 
sand ragged bits, they make the fair temple and the easy 
path. B}' no seer has heaven been revealed. By no 
straining e3'e can it be discerned. The}^ only will 
reach it, who by self-denial make a stepping-stone of 
the earth. 

Love is truth ! It has no licentious secrets, but a 
lawful privacy, all intrusion on which is profane. As 
the bird hides her nest amongst the leaves of the 
thicket, not for deceit but to be true to her nature and 
her offspring, and would be false to herself and to her 
Author, if with foolish candor she exposed the delicate 
beaut}' of her eggs to ever}' prowling eye or careless 
tread of the passing foot, so no frankness could impart 
to vulgar curiosity the truth of responsive breasts. Of 
all eavesdroppers and overhearers he is basest who 
lurks, walks softly on tiptoe, and puts his eye and ear 
to the key-hole to catch the gentle confession or sur- 
prise the ingenuous blush. There are. scenes in which 
kith and kin have no part to act, and from which churls 
and tattlers should be whipped. But all privilege of 
mutual converse apart has a solemnity which no gay 
throng is overshadowed by. Tf it be perverted, a 
heavier responsibility is attached. But there is a love 



170 PRINCIPLES. 

which avoids collisions and clears all obstacles, as a 
bird threads, without touching, the boughs in the wood. 
So interior and ideal is it, that not even by the wan- 
dering of the e3'e on its object can it be caught. It is 
a simple sentiment, but not therefore less lasting or 
strong. A sentiment or idea, in David Hume's, as 
in all sceptical or materialistic philosophy, is but the 
ghost and remnant of a sensation. But were sensations 
in nature the real powers, which in thoughts only dwin- 
dle and in feelings are diluted and reduced, then beasts 
were mightier than men ! Vulgar people have main- 
tained that on sexual appetite rests the commonwealth. 
On the attraction betwixt man and woman society is 
based ; but its refined is greater than its gross force, 
and its weight is like the gravitation of the globe. 
That is the most ardent and enduring love wherein is 
no aim at pleasure or posterity, but which survives all 
earthly contingencies and knows it can be out of the 
body and in any other or heavenl}^ form. The hen ruf- 
fling for her chickens at the hawk, and the walrus 
making herself a target for her young against the 
hunter's spear, disprove the selfish theory, as much as 
do men fighting for their homes, and mothers sacrific- 
ing themselves for their oflTspring ever}^ day. Whoever 
loves would yield ever}^ drop of blood for the beloved, 
and would not take in pay for the affection a single 
tear. This fact, not any temple, tower, or snow- 
capped hill, is the glory of the world. My friend, I 
love you not for j^our favor or aught you can give for 
m}' delectation, but for the very nature or qualit}^ that 
3'Ou are ! Nay, if you hate or despise me, I should 
love you still, and you cannot repel the sentiment ; for, 



LOVE. 171 

as Goethe saj's, " if I love 3'ou, what is that to 3-011?" 
Electricity' travels b}^ a sure iron path, over land or 
under sea ; but my heart knows a cable never broken, 
a wire that is in order and alwa^'s works ! Awaj- with 
the- notion that fondness is indispensable to nourish 
regard ! Feehng ma}' be in inverse ratio to demonstra- 
tion. How often, in this m3'stery of mutual communi- 
cation, people are moved b}' what we suppress and 
withhold ! I love m\' countr}^ but cannot embrace it 
with m}' arms, although sometimes a returning king has 
saluted, by lying down on its soil, or a poet, like Byron, 
sent it the farewell of a song. Christians love their 
Lord, though they cannot touch, and onl}- in imagina- 
tion embrace, his image. It is a lower greeting when 
crucifix or picture is handled or kissed b}' some devotee. 
It is no vanity for a worshipper to love his God, though 
he cannot locate or metaph^sicall}'' define him or prove 
the personality he adores. 

Is sensation the sun and is sentiment the pale moon 
in the firmament of the soul? There are aflTections in- 
expressible because intense ! There are exercises and 
emotions animal men know nothing of, to which their 
coarser movement is a smok}^ and smouldering fire. 
Love cannot, in its highest flight on earth, quite get rid 
of the outward form. But it has learned that our 
bod}' is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that " holi- 
ness becometh thy house, O Lord, for ever ; " and it 
worships God less in dedicated courts or the sanctuary 
of the sk}' than in the human frame, which it exalts 
and sublimes. In Michael Angelo's forms of saint, 
sibyl, and seer we seem to behold all that human crea- 
tures can be or do or say. What need of the long his- 



172 PRINCIPLES. 

toiy or drama on the stage ? Thomas Couture calls the 
brush the best of pens. 

Pure love is peace. If it long for its object, God 
comes and sa^^s : "Am I not enough? Art not con- 
tent with me, in all this order and beauty without, and 
the witnessing spirit within ? " But neither the divine 
nor the human can be loved as an abstraction. We 
must shape it as alive and conscious to our thought, as 
a harmou}'^ to the inward eye and ear. There is an ex- 
ternal and an internal perception. Not those who accu- 
rately distinguish diverse shades, and are farthest from 
being color-blind, are certain to dress with most taste. 
A performer may know the musical chords to perfec- 
tion, and not play with expression or be able to com- 
pose a piece. A rhetorician is not apt to be eloquent, 
and I knew a complete anatomist in marble who could 
carve no beautiful work. How profound is the dis- 
cernment of beauty ! It is so deep it knows all is well ; 
and its transport is in no one fading shape, but in the 
universe. There is a restless sort of genius to which 
nothing is settled, and which would tear up the very 
platform on which it stands. But perceptive love 
adores God in the creation he has made, and thinks it 
the best he could do up to date ; and it fixes on his 
creature for no half-hour of desperate jo}'^, but with 
look of continual bliss and eternal hope. For love has 
no limits. There is naught it will not do or endure. 
All it is or has it gives. Nothing can it withhold. 
AVith itself every thing goes. It is Godhead in mortal 
dress ; for what is God but infinite communication and 
perpetual gift? The lover's mistake and the tragedy of 
time is to take or covet the outward before the inward 
is won or bestows itself. 



LOVE. 173 

To illustrate what I cannot define, let me 'draw a 
portrait, real and ideal too. I see a 3'oung girl who 
exchanges with her lover glances and the clasp of 
hands, when suddenh^, in my vision, he faints on the 
journe}^ and vanishes awa}'. The object is gone, but 
the sentiment remains. The}' who look on and pass by 
saj' she need not sacrifice to it herj'outh, the bloom and 
beaut}^ of her da3's ! Some other companionship will 
be as acceptable and become even more dear. The 
sweets of domestic life for her are still in store, and 
her children, to a long line, shall yet rise up and call 
their mother blessed. But not so ; her wordless oath 
she keeps till death. She cherishes the image of the 
bridegroom unespoused. She reserves her wedding- 
garment till her arrival among those whom the Revela- 
tion pictures as clad all in white ; and no household 
happiness, where the morning salutations of a faithful 
partnership never fail, and little ones run ga3'ly about in 
their guileless sport, can know how rare is her vision- 
ary bliss. It is called romantic, a mirage of fanc}', a 
mere memory and a dream. Bat when the graj'-haired 
woman herself at last departs, does she not, a maiden 
still, find the long-lost mate? Yes, if God's promise 
holds, his creatures will keep tryst. This ecstasy of 
imagination and of ideal love proves that naught is so 
real and solid on earth as the gleam and glamour of 
hope. As the train I had taken passage in rolled on 
toward the cit}' station, which was 3'et miles afar, a lit- 
tle bo}' pointed out of the window to the State House 
dome, and said to his father, " That shiny place is 
where I want to go ! " It was but the glimmer of 
m3'riad sunbeams from the State House dome, as they 



174 PRINCIPLES. 

shifted and danced, that was in his e3'^e. Yet it was 
more substantial than all the architecture of the stony 
street that should so soon entrance his gaze. Our dis- 
tant view is an annunciation of the heaven that can 
but continue its own ever-prospective bliss. The little 
girl gathered up the j^ellow straw from the floor of the 
car rattling on the higiiwa}^, and smiled to mark its 
golden color, more intense as the open window poured 
in the bright rays. "What gold will ever charm her so 
much? Cheap seem the elements of our dail}^ life. 
But in the light of those affections that come from 
the heaven to which they reach back, what a transfigu- 
ration the coarsest circumstances take ! We all, like 
Peter and James and John, have with Jesus gone up 
into the Mount. 

Love finds its dignity in its depth. First, it is in our 
thought, next in the look, afterward in the voice, and 
last in the touch or hand ; and a perfect contentment 
in absence attends the sentiment in its higher degrees. 
Its growing intensit}' dispenses with bodily presence, 
and makes it strike with electric speed through earth 
and time. It is what Jesus called the "coming like 
lightning of the Son of Man ; " and it can find what it 
cares for in heaven as well. There are faces which we 
can see clearly without the aid of light ! How they 
beam upon us through the spaces and the years, and 
light up midnight for us as we lie on our bed, 
though they mayhap vanished long ago away ! If per- 
chance any one near b}^ frown or speak roughl}', we 
cannot hear the harshness or see the scowl for the 
charm and melody unsuspected by revilers, whose 
voices fill the air. There is sound philosoph}' in the 



LOVE. 175 

language b}' which being put to the question denoted 
instruments of torture in the Inquisition ; and a certain 
mode of interrogation signifies still the chief penalty 
and pain. But we want no explanations or apologies 
from those whom we hold dear, and hy none are we held 
dear who insist on them from us. Kind treatment we 
would have for what is sore in our bod}' or mind ; but, 
O friend, leave to a wholesome and healing neglect 
even the wounds 3'ou have 3'ourself poured balm into 
and bound up ! Inquire not too much into your bosom- 
companion's griefs, nor compel him to tell all the tale 
of his life. Much and all will be told to those that do 
not ask ; and you shall have the secrets into which 3'ou 
do not prj'. 

What a wonder is wrought in such communication ! 
"VYe want for food or stimulant no turning of water into 
wine or multiplied fishes and loaves of bread, nor caro 
we to cast out any demons but those of jealousy and 
doubt. Then I know that the tenure of m}^ being can- 
not slip, when I can perceive no diflference between my 
feeling for another and another's feeling for me ; for 
the might}' cause of blessedness like this is not a power 
that leaves a miracle half done. 

More than moral, even immortal, is our love. We 
promise it to the child that will do right. But true 
love has no such condition in God or man. " If you 
are naughty, I shall not love you," said the nurse. " I 
shall love you whether you are naughty or not," replied 
the little boy. W^hich had the divinity? I love a cer- 
tain nature or being ; the love does not depend on the 
person's behavior. I will not threaten, for I could not 
succeed to withdraw it, were he or she evil to others or 



176 PKINCIPLES. 

unfaithful to mj^self. His or her goodness and purity 
shall touch my heart to finer issues, but never dam the 
genial current up, because no morality is so deep as its 
spring. It seems indeed, when we love one, there never 
was a time when we did not know and feel the love. 
It IS Plato's pre-existent soul. The maiden asks the 
man why he loves her, for she wonders and cannot tell ; 
but he marvels no less, and cannot tell wherefore or 
how, or whence or whither, only that he loves. Either 
can affirm the positive what which neither can fathom ; 
but, like one that gazes on some wrinkling bottomless 
tarn in the woods, only surve}^ the surface of the sol- 
emn fact. Love is the vent toward the individual of 
the whole heart of mankind and of God. But how 
lover and beloved are transformed by their mutual sen- 
timent, all can note. Verily, what it cannot make beau- 
tiful must be an awkward form and ugly face ! How 
it moulds and tints the features, and is that power that 
prophesies in the Revelation, "Behold, I make all 
things new " ! It is regeneration and religion, and the 
vastness of the feeling can never be quite given to or 
received by the human object, but escapes in thanks to 
the infinite receptacle and source. "I thank God for 
your kindness " is a Mohammedan phrase. Let woman 
judge of man hy this test. If he does not worship the 
Giver in the gift, and enshrine that living boon in the 
sanctit}^ of devotion and prayer ; if, irreverently rushing, 
he invades her sphere, or b}^ a word or sign desecrates 
the shrine before which he should tremble with awe 
even in his hope and joy, — then he is a pretender, who 
will possess ovly to desert and betray. 

How marvellous the feehng, possession with which 



LOVE. 177 

makes one little face eclipse the snn and moon ! The 
artist's nimbus of gloiy around an}' saintly countenance 
shall fade away ; but the dear features we have once 
loved will hold their fast color. The cow and the 
sheep, that nibble and chew all day long in the field, 
shall lose their appetite and their pasture too ; but the 
taste shall abide, of which disinterested affection is 
both the feeder and the food. There is a house in 
us which it inhabits, and both builds and keeps from 
all false fondness clear and clean. It is that prophet 
an apostle spoke of, to which the spirits are subject. 
For it heaven is not too large, nor eternity too long. 

If any Cato of virtue, who never felt that flame which 
spires into the line of beaut}', object to the height even 
above the moral sense which it attains, let the censor 
remember that God is love, and not conscience, which 
implies a sense of sin ; and what monsters conscientious 
angels would be ! But, though righteousness can never 
mount to love, love must descend in righteousness, which 
is the eternal law for God and angels and men. The 
question is but of cause and consequence, the fountain 
and the stream. 



12 



178 PRINCIPLES. 



VII. 
LIFE. 

LIFE cannot proceed in societ}^ or the world without 
death. Birth and death are like two guide-boards 
at the crossings of country roads leading to the same 
cit}^, and we read one direction on the cradle and the 
grave. The doctrine, so curiously traced and clearly ex- 
pounded bj' Darwin, in regard to the structure of plants 
and animals, that there is a principle of selection and 
variation to transform species so that the fittest will sur- 
vive, was anticipated in its spiritual meaning thousands 
of 3'ears ago. It is the commonplace of Christianity that 
a man must be born again, and that the wilUng loss is 
the savins; of one's life. What is birth but death to a 
former state of the babe that shivers as it comes, wink- 
ins: at the candle or the sun, into a world to which the 
womb is a prison? Out of the world of the senses into 
that of thought and love and worship it will in due time 
be brought forth. What the earth is to it at first will 
then seem a narrower jail than ever can one's mother's 
breast. Life out of death is the law of nature which 
I would unfold. 

Even in the mineral kingdom its commencement or 
prediction appears. Something in the primeval rock 
from immemorial time struggled up toward life. A 
rude beginning of organization is in granite and gneiss 



LIFE. 179 

and mica and slate. The huge strata of the globe 
attempt and undertake to blossom. Their flowers are 
gems, — diamond and ruby, sapphire and emerald, 
ameth3'st and pearl. Why are these called precious 
stones, but that the}^ express the ascent of matter 
towards man, on whose hand the}' shall sparkle and 
in whose diadem thej' shall shine ? The diamond means 
truth, the ruby love, the pearl purity, the sapphire 
faith, and the ameth3'st hope. In cold and senseless 
things the Lord has begun to knit living ties of affec- 
tion and honor, and to weave his creatures and children 
together. What is the jewel but the mineral dying to 
itself, — that is, to those first properties of size, coarse- 
ness, opacity, and a peculiar specific gravitj' that made 
it mineral, — and putting on the color, weight, densit}', 
temperature, and transparency into which out of the 
vast, almost formless laj^ers it is born again, and be- 
comes a gem and regeneration of the clod. A German 
philosopher, Zollner, thinks that in cr3'stalIization there 
ma}' be sensibility. It is at least affectation of life. 

In the vegetable, but more marked, is this statute of 
death as the condition of life. The seed dies in the 
ground to live more gloriously above it. The bark dies 
on ever}' plant and tree, that the life it protects and 
encloses may expand and flourish. Some species of 
trees continue this process of dying to live again and 
more abundant!}' as long as they stand in the dusky 
w^ood. The pine-tree drops year after year its decayed 
branches so as to keep its trunk straight and round and 
tapering, and lift its evergreen top more aloft into the 
skies, with what a musical murmuring in the wind for 
its voice, a song at once of triumph and a sigh over the 
grave ! 



180 PRINCIPLES. 

These are outward figures and prophecies of the fact 
that in the animal and human kingdom, too, death is 
the condition of hfe. Even in the beast is ilhistration 
of the invariable rule. It is common, especially for 
theologians, to say the animal races make no progress. 
But of either races or individuals the saving is not 
true. Why should an old Jox be the title we apply 
to a man as sly as is sometimes the governor of a 
State, if the old fox had not carried cunning a little 
farther than the young one ? When a dog picked up 
the purse containing nearly a thousand dollars which a 
man had dropped, and trotted swiftl}^ after to turn 
round ahead, and courteously present it to the owner, 
who afterwards rewarded him with a silver collar, was 
it not a cultivated and intelligent generosity which no 
puppy of a month could have displayed? The lower 
tribes are raised b}' converse with man. Lions and 
tigers, wild cats and leopards, die somewhat to their 
native ferocit}'. They moderate, and under a kindly 
keeper's hand, with some evident effort hush their roar 
or scream or growl. 

But in humanity proper is the crowning demonstra- 
tion of death as the condition of life. That verily is a 
barren and melancholy history for anybody which is 
not one long register of the decline and extinction of 
rudimental tastes and appetites, as childhood goes on to 
3^outh and manhood succeeds to both, and all leave so 
far behind infancy for dear life sucking at its mother's 
breast. How the boy that longed for a sled, a pony, a 
fishing-rod, and a gun as the joys and grandeurs of 
being, and could not do, he thought, without them, 
himself now a grave and gray-headed judge, preacher, 



LIFE. 181 

manufacturer, or trader, looks back on them all as to3'S, 
bj his fancy for which he is in recollection surprised 
and amused ! O mother, with 3'our children at 3'our 
knee, what care 3'ou for the doll which is such a pleas- 
ure and pastime or serious concern to 3'our little girl? 
Some of us men remember when we did not pass by the 
window of a cand3'-shop with a ver3' rapid foot ! I bear 
in mind a confectioner's store, where the stage stopped 
half-wa3' on a journe3' to Boston fift3" 3'ears ago, as so 
punctuall3' the driver drew up his team at the inn hard 
b3\ The Italian who kept it, Dominic Peduzzi, must 
long since have had some heavenl3' recompense for his 
fair dealing in earthl3' sweets. How we smile now 
that we ever wanted to beat in the race or bear the 
college honors off ! Channing was a famous wrestler. 
What at last would he throw but error and sin ! ■ How 
dead we all who have grown old have become to what 
were once the keenest delights and liveliest pursuits ! 
We could no longer stay in our earliest dispositions 
than in our frocks and long clothes. Dead and buried, 
how much and how man3', how far awa3' and long ago ! 
But not sad or deplorable is the burial or death. It 
is the condition of resurrection. Not a few of our 
notions, some of our political opinions and religious 
creeds, have died, not to leave a vacuum and void, but 
to make room for better views. In vain you tell me I 
do not preach precisel3' the tenets of forty 3'ears ago. 
Wh3' should I? The3' have perished; I have interred 
them : some of m3' books and pamphlets are perhaps 
their tombs. No doubt the loving and inspiring senti- 
ments b3" which the3' were animated survive ; but the 
particular form and construction have passed like dis- 



182 PRINCIPLES. 

solving views, crumbling frames, and withering leaves. 
When m}^ Orthodox friend quoted the admonition of 
John Robinson, the Pilgrim minister, to his Leyden flock, 
that "more truth 3- et would break out of God's Holy 
Word," I replied there would be also from God more 
word, to which the rejoinder was, " Men in these days 
can be illuminated, but not inspired," as if God were 
dead, or dumb, or had abdicated like some earthl3' mon- 
arch, Bonaparte or Charles V., and was never going to 
speak to his children on earth again, being in fact in 
certain prophets and apostles embalmed, and in bound 
volumes embargoed and locked up ! But we do not 
worship a great Deaf-mute or defunct Deity. We say 
with Jesus, " He is not the God of the dead, but of the 
living." We wait for his bidding, and hear his com- 
forting voice. 

Affections for persons as well as things sometimes 
die, as die they must, if they are affections founded 
upon selfish or superficial considerations. To the fu- 
neral of love no officiating minister is called. At its 
grave no prayer is offered aloud. No sexton's spade 
can be bespoken or employed on that inner ground 
where the sepulture is made. Two spots in once mutu- 
ally throbbing breasts are required for one affection to 
be laid away to eternal rest. It is a ceremou}^ private, 
secret, unspeakably dreadful while it lasts. But how 
can a carnal, shallow, and egotistic regard last, however 
eager it may be and warm ! It is death-struck in its 
conception, and diseased in all its duration ; not a true 
birth, but an abortion of the soul. Do not cry 3'our 
eyes out, or bleed 3'our heart to death, when one who 
has sought you from interested and collateral aims, be it 



LIFE. 183 

man or woman, in fine like a traitor, deserts when his am- 
bition or her vanity and conceit can no longer be served. 
Drop the acquaintance, when 3'our power no longer is 
permitted to go along with your hearty good-will. Good- 
b}', and God bless you, I say to such as b}' their own 
changed feeling and purpose in street or hall, church or 
house, make all the coolness and distance there is betwixt 
them and me. But this social death is condition and 
preparation for the heart's better life. The regard even 
for a truh' beloved one that never faltered maj' indeed 
have a sort of death from which it rises and ascends to 
be glorified. Perhaps it was a face, a voice, a manner, 
a graceful carriage, even a fine ribbon or well-fitting 
robe, we in our greener judgment loved. How can an 
enduring affection be so produced? The chronology 
of it must be short. But if our sentiment penetrate 
to a quality in the dear one's nature, to a charm of 
temper, and to fineness of feeling which is ardor too, 
to a divinit}' of aspiration in which we find our poor 
fragment of God's image in another bosom complete, 
then our love shall outlive the stars. Perhaps out of 
the sepulchre of an at first indiscriminating propensity 
the holy and indefeasible passion rose. So wondrous 
are the transformations ! There is, as our poet tells us, 
" the initial, the demonic, and the celestial love." 

What a man shall take in exchange for his life, 
through which alone an}" thing can be enjoyed or felt, 
seems a question too absurd to be asked. Who would 
sell the least part of life, any bodily sense, member, or 
faculty, an e3'e, ear, hand, or foot, for a sum of money? 
A man of princely fortune, aflflicted with gout in his 
feet, was inquked of what he would take for his splen- 



184 PRINCIPLES. 

did turnout of a carriage drawn b}^ a beautiful span of 
horses, and his answer was, " The poorest pair of legs 
in State Street." I meet a man who is dim-ej-^ed, hard 
of hearing, or limps as he walks. Would I accept his 
infirmity with his millions at the bank? Yet if b}^ life 
we mean the vital power from thrs curiously connected 
spirit and flesh, how freely, ever}" day, it is parted 
with and must be given for some object, grand or 
mean ! The sun is reeling off our thread with his 
ceaseless motion, and the stars are the fatal sisters, 
which the Greeks personified, to spin and cut this mor- 
tal yarn. If ours be twent}' or sevent}" turnings of the 
wheel, what shall we do with the existence which with 
all these earthly events the}" weave? Our poet pictures' 
himself as gathering some cheap trifles or herbs out of 
all this fruit and treasure offered b}'^ the passing da3"s, 
and as their troop retires, observing too late their 
scorn on his folly. What was our horror while the 
highest bidder had men and women in our land ! But 
as the abolition of the lottery by law has not stopped 
gambling in business or in saloons, in upper-chambers 
and underground dens, so the auction-block for flesh 
and blood still stands despite the emancipation of 
slaves. It is not long since a 3'oung woman of great 
personal attractions and no fondness for low pleasure 
said to me she had thought of selling herself for a sub- 
sistence instead of depending on charitable aid. Not 
onl}^ houses and ships are sold in open market, and 
foreign bills payable at sight by the merchants, and 
wheat and cotton from the West and South, and oil, 
iron, silver, and gold from Lake Superior, Pennsylva- 
nia wells, and California mines ; but votes are purchased 



LIFE. 185 

by all parties on principle and without a blush. News- 
papers bu}^ views not held by the writers by whom the}'' 
are expressed, just as legal arguments are bought from 
arguers who know the unsoundness of what the^^ say 
in court. Is it more wrong for the witness to render 
false testimony than for the law3'er to make what he 
knows to be the worse appear the better reason in 
his plea ? There is a perjury of intellect as well as of 
fact ; and the counsellor is forsworn who would give to 
an}' representation with judge or jur}^ a weight it has 
not in reason and his own mind, — a thing which it is 
said neither Daniel Webster nor Abraham Lincoln could 
do, ever3'bod3' presentl}' perceiving, b}^ their faintness 
and faltering, when those great advocates had no confi- 
dence in their own case. A conviction, anymore than an 
affection, cannot be sold, only a pretension to the faith 
or love which does not exist ; and h^'pocrisy so weakens 
the hypocrite that in the end it never paj's. It cannot 
have, in private converse or public discourse, the power 
that comes from real persuasion alone. Trul}' eloquent 
falsehood or insincerity cannot be. Candor is the 
thing to succeed ! The late famous editor of the Lon- 
don Times, Mr. Delane, owed, it is said, his remarka- 
ble strength at his post largel}' to one of his rules, 
which was never to emplo}' any contributors to main- 
tain positions in his columns which they did not 
privately hold themselves. The Times was not con- 
sistent, as the times are not from which it took its 
name. As English policy varied, so the paper would 
veer. It was a paper kite ; it was a weathercock. 
It would say with Camille Desmoulins, "It is not 
the vane that has shifted, but the wind ! " Yet the 



186 PRINCrPLES. 

particular writer for this indicator and plaything of 
public opinion must have his whole heart and soul, 
nevertheless, in the particular piece he brought ; and 
that is a matter of policy and thrift for the ' ' Thun- 
derer," as that British sheet is called, although it looks 
sometimes rather like the painted ball you amuse j^our- 
self to throw for 3^our trained terrier to catch, than 
a bolt from the skies. But we cannot credit most per- 
sons or organs with being heart}^ and without inward 
scruple in what they loudly and unscrupulousl}^ sa}^ for 
the public. The}' have sold their tongues and pens 
to some political party, business affair, or religious sect. 
Our soul, however, we cannot sell ; only its mask. 
Faust did not sell his soul to the devil, as Goethe writes, 
nor Galileo his to the Pope : for though the former 
made a bargain, the mighty remorseful soul in him 
could not carry it out ; and though the latter recanted 
in words his discovery of the earth's revolution, he 
swore all the time under his breath, " Yet indeed it does 
move ! " All that can be purchased of us is to p\B,y 
a part in which is no cordialit}^ or truth. This is as 
near to perdition as we can come, and it is near 
enough ! How ashamed we are, with a mortification 
the mercenary author does not seem to feel, at the reg- 
ular leader in tj'pe of some daily sheet devoted to the 
rotten cause ! ' ' AVhat is sold in the shambles eat, 
asking no questions for conscience' sake," didst thou 
say, O Paul, not reflecting how much would so be sold 
beside animal food ? But if there are base things there 
are noble ones, too, in this great, many-colored booth 
of the globe, to be purchased with life. Nothing of a 
moral concern can be so small but existence has been 



LIFE. 187 

economicany laid clown for it on the counter like a note 
of hand or bit of coin from the purse. Long life is at a 
rate too dear if secured with the least sacrifice of truth 
or honor, be it the last subscrij^tion to a refuted creed, 
or ancient pinch of incense the first Christians would 
not throw on Jupiter's shrine. 

But can we exchange life for release from pain? 
Have we a right to procure deliverance from personal 
distress of mind, bod}', or estate by ending our own 
sublunary stay? B3' no religion, philosophy, or verdict 
of the world's conscience, has this inquir}' ever been 
solved. Even its discussion must be prudent not to 
hurt the public health. Yet b}' the frequenc}' of sui- 
cide how some consideration of it is irresistibly' urged ! 
I would propose no dogma, but ask consideration and 
compassion for those who are thus dead. The self- 
murderer's bod}' was once flung out of city-walls to be 
buried shamefully and obscurely at some crossing of 
country-roads ; and by our horror of his act, every one 
in imagination flings an additional stone at his igno- 
minious cairn, if we cannot forget where he lies ! 
But the motives, no less than the circumstances, of the 
ghastl}' deed diff'er so widely that a uniform judgment 
on those who deal the fatal blow is alike unjust and 
absurd. We may admire in one case what in another 
we denounce. When the Hebrew Saul and the Roman 
Brutus, unable to survive defeat, fall on their own 
swords ; when the Greek Zeno, at a great age, rather 
than be a helpless cripple, lets the blood from his veins ; 
when Judas the traitor hangs himself to "go to his 
own place," neither history' nor Scripture condemns, and 
at other tribunals the judges will not agree. When 



188 PRINCIPLES. 

the persecuted Elijah under the juniper-tree requests 
the Lord to take awa}^ his life, and the sore-afflicted 
Job, though he will not curse God, levels a malediction 
on the day of his birth, and hunts about for his own 
grave, their piety is brought under no final attaint. 
When the violated Lucretia stabs herself, and with the 
bloodj^ knife in- her hand summons and leads the state, 
with all its munitions and arms, to expel the Tarquins, 
she wins an honor of which by no Jesuitical casuistry 
she can be robbed. What reader of " Ivanhoe" would 
not have had Scott's Rebecca leap from the battlements 
of Front de Boeuf 's castle, had the insolent and sensual 
Templar drawn nearer by an inch ; or for whose tomb, 
now, would the whitest marble of the quarry be so soon 
sought as for whoever of our own kith and kin should 
in like emergency take the same step, were it the for- 
lorn and only escape? 

Whether such a step would be justified on account 
of physical anguish, nervous prostration, and utter de- 
spair, we may differ and doubt. But we must inquire 
how and by whose fault such a hopeless and dismal 
condition has been produced. For not seldom murder 
instead of suicide were the fitter term ! As induced elec- 
tricity is potent in its own way, so we are responsible 
for whatever actions proceed from the state into which 
we bring others' minds. The stroke terminating earthly 
existence, which we call voluntary in him b}' whom it is 
dealt on himself, has been, in fact, how often delivered 
like a bullet at long range from some other hand ! 
Were the tables of vital statistics amended, we should 
know how many, who in all the wars of the world have 
rushed into the path of the cannon-ball, were driven 



LIFE. 189 

forth by intolerable relations and from unhapp}' homes. 
Death is Misery's recruiting-sergeant ; and Rip Van 
"Winkle expelled from the threshold is a mere theatrical 
example of man}' banishments in real life. As cruel 
landholders evict impoverished tenants, man}^ a lord 
and lady have exiled their mates heart-broken to find 
no refuge but the grave. Abandoned wretches, indeed, 
that have not secured that other retreat of an appeal to 
the One that knows and cares ! Religion is reference to 
him ; and it is a salvation on the earth, be there or not 
any ascension for us into the skies. Let us beware of 
forcing our companions nearer or faster than they must 
go to the edge of that precipice over which we must all 
disappear. Make not others wear}- of living, whatever 
3'ou do with 3'our own life. Let not our own be such a 
trial to them in theirs that, in a fancy which is not fore- 
boding, the}- shall behold us defunct, and actually cast 
the horoscope of our own decease ! Parents may use 
so harshly w-ith their children the power they possess, 
and husbands may pinch their wives so closely in the 
means which they niggardly dole out, that in the de- 
mise of these misers and tyrants will be the only bounty 
and tolerance they so unintentionally bestow. If the 
man himself be less coveted, cared for, or thought 
of than his estate, and the chief rejoicing in him by 
inmates of his household is that they may be his pro^d- 
dential survivors and heirs, then his being is no bless- 
ing, but such a ban that it would seem he, like Iscariot in 
the Master's sentence, had better never have been born. 
Life is the largest of words in the elevations and 
profundities of meaning it spans. But in the common, 
carnal sense what is it worth? It is as cheap as any 



190 PRINCIPLES. 

counter of wood or bone with which we play a game. 
Only by what we win with it are we really touched. 
Christians find their example in Jesus the Christ ; and 
how earl}' and prematurely, in strict consequence of his 
own behavior, he was cut off ! On scarce more than 
one of his thirty 3'ears is our interest fixed. How did 
he contrive to crowd causes of influence so man}' and 
mighty on his countrymen and mankind into a dozen 
passing months? Wherefore the immortal pregnancy 
in his few fleeting words, brief sufferings, and scattered 
though gracious works ? Answer to such points as we 
may, on his own declaration, to his own will or to his 
choice of his Father's, we must refer the shortness of 
a career whose term might have been doubled on a plan 
of conduct different from his actual design. For he 
solemnly avers to his followers that he is the author of 
his own death. He affirms that no man taketh his life 
away from him, but he layeth it down of himself; and 
moreover that he had power, or in a better translation 
an express commission, from God to lay it down and 
take it again. So he waves away the swords he had 
ordered perhaps for his disciples' protection, certainly 
not for his own defence. How did he finish his life by 
his own act and decree ? He used the passions of the 
people, the outcries of the mob in Jerusalem, the fa- 
naticism of the Pharisees, the imputed outrage from him 
on Caesar's authority, and the mockeries of Pilate, Pe- 
ter's cowardl}' denial, and Judas's treacherous kiss, as 
well as the official swords and staves in the garden 
and at the cross, borne to Calvary on his own road- weary 
back, for the weapons with which to pierce and drain 
his own breast. " He died as the fool dieth," said an 



LIFE. 191 

officer of the law respecting the martyr Lovejoy, who 
fell in Alton, Illinois, thirty 3'ears ago, defending 
against the pro-slavery rioters his own printing-press. 
No nnbeliever has ever ventured to characterize the 
crucifixion so ! If that were foolish, what was ever 
wise ? Unbelief has stood with a holy fear before that 
spectacle, at which it is said the heavens were veiled ; 
and we tremble in every heart-string when we ask what 
this capitulator and destro3'er of his own existence 
gained by his great surrender. We speak of men as- 
sailed b}' assassins or in the battle-field's dreadful fray 
as determining to sell their life dear. Did the crucifiers 
know how high the}' bid? Who shall calculate the 
spiritual dividend from that sublime abnegation b}' our 
Lord of mortal delight? It seems almost an extrava- 
gance of God that by the door of that single exit so 
much should be allowed to enter the world ! Did that 
Son of his, as he chose to date his own term here 
below, himself comprehend the results of new life and 
hght and J03' and hope? Did he understand that the 
real angels to visit and issue from his tomb were not to 
be the ones clad in shining garments, but worthier prin- 
ciples and purer affections in the world for all time 
to come? Of traders in their own life, selfish or dis- 
interested, do we speak? Here was a merchant that 
transacted with death on a vast scale ! He was verily 
on that exchange of which he made a figure for all men. 
All your bonds and per cents and funds are but zero to 
that ! He was no cheated or incompetent dealer with 
the last enemy of us aU. He died how willingh' ! He 
decided emphatically to die. But he permitted not 
death to get any advantage of him, not a jot. With 



192 PRINCIPLES. 

that grisl}^ phantom he insisted on fair and honest 
terms. To that foe, whicii we picture now with a 
sc3'the, again with a dart or hour-glass, and anon as 
a skeleton in a shadowy dance, he gave only his fading 
fleshly frame, over both which and its destrojxr the 
und3'ing soul in triumph arose. 

In the gospel story he is reported as saving to his 
followers that he was a shepherd lajing down his life 
for the sheep; and "greater love hath no man than 
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And 
Paul, his chief apostle and continuer of his work, adds 
that, though scarce for a righteous man would one die, 
and yet for a good man some would even dare to die, 
*' God had commended his love to us in that, while 
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." To give our 
life as God does the rising light for others, be they good 
or evil, just or unjust, is indeed the pitch beyond which 
no virtue or goodness can go. But to give it in labors, 
offerings, and privations every day is a consecration as 
real and lofty as though we were to drown in trying to 
save from the flood, or burn in eff'ort to deliver from 
the suffocating fire and smoke, or face the devouring 
sword for our fellows, or mount the gallows, or lay our 
head on the block for any cause of freedom or truth. 

"What will you take for it?" is the question every 
day. What will I take for my life ? It is a cipher to 
which value is given only by the numeral that stands 
before. I will take knowledge, friendship, integrity, 
love. I will take a good conscience, be satisfied, and 
call it quits. I will starve rather than cheat, and die 
sooner than default and betray my bonds. If my life 
be wretched, I will not throw it up and away like an 



LIFE. 193 

empt}'. sponge. But I will not sit on the bench, and 
sentence those who do. Whether one's life should be 
relinquished or another's ended for any such cause, 
science and religion ma}' some time pronounce. But 
when a man has forfeited his life by a capital crime, or 
is a monster unfit to live, let there be in future some 
kinder quietus than the hangman's cord and noose or 
headsman's axe. Let our life be devotion to dut}', 
which is transcendent and everlasting life. 

But there are occasions that cheapen life, and in sim- 
ilar situations how diverse it is ! Crowding to the table 
on a canal-boat or ocean-steamer, elbowing each other 
to get a nearer look at the ashes and smoking walls 
after a conflagration, forming into procession in the 
street to honor a benefactor or celebrate a great event, 
rushing into battle for their homes or to conquer in 
Afghanistan, thronging to the theatre, concert-room, or 
church, human creatures are a species which it defies us 
to classify' or span. How often one may sa}' of him- 
self, What am I but a blowing wind or running stream, 
able to decide not the native volume of my power, but 
only something of the direction in which I shall blow or 
run? Said the American 3'outh, My life is ignominy if 
I keep it back when union and libert^^ are at stake, and 
the black flag of bondage is upreared and threatens 
to flaunt its inhuman folds all over the land. Into 
the sea of bloody atonement I empty my veins. Hu- 
man nature is depraved, sa3's the old creed. Na}^, it is 
more hol}^ and sublime than the sun and the stars, 
when wives and mothers, loving maidens and sisters 
and 3'oung daughters, grudge not what in manhood is 
manifold dear to them, but gird on it the armor, .weave 



194 PKINCIPLES. 

the silken colors, put flowers into the muzzles of the 
guns, and bid God-speed away from their sight all 
that is precious to it on earth, when the fra}' is for free- 
dom, and when the nation is brought to bay by those 
same bloodhounds that pursued the fugitive negro. 
But lo ! in the lapse of years a generation is already 
on the stage that know nothing of the ciAdl war. 
From their cradle, ere it was rocked, the cloud charged 
with such thunderbolts had rolled. Yet patriotic or 
religious duty has not changed. Why, O preacher, 
emphasize so the fact that Jesus gave his life ? Was 
it more than he and we all ought ? Is it not demoraliz- 
ing rather than helpful to present the single case as 
such a rarity and miracle of goodness ? When I love 
any one, what so easy as either on- any sudden occa- 
sion or all the time to give my life? We love and 
honor the Master for doing what is but an example and 
encouragement quite natural and not prodigious. Are 
we saved by his merits as so many indulgences foi* 
past, though not, as the Rome which Luther resisted 
construed them, for future sins? He had no merits. 
He but returned what he had received. What he had 
under God derived from humanity he restored. As 
blossom or fruit on the bough renders back in fra- 
grance and food the juices it has sucked from the soil, 
so alone did the Saviour of the world yield from the 
genealogical tree on which he grew. He was lifted by 
successive throes of this same old human heart to the 
mountain-top of the race ; and the fertihzing streams 
therefrom, of which his soul was the spring, as they 
originated from, so they are the property of mankind, 
as much as the Jordan and the Amazon belong to the 



LIFE. 195 

earth out of whose distilled ocean-waters their fountains 
were formed. However rich prophet, apostle, and re- 
deemer may be, the}' are but as kings bound to spend 
on the people the treasur}- which the people have filled. 
No exchequer of virtue in the most highl}' gifted but is 
due to all the rest. We are just only when we feel 
that of any grace or talent with which we may shine 
not a farthing is our own. 

But if humanity be our root, was not the divinit}^ 
that of Christ? Divinity whence or where? In out- 
ward space and handiwork of earth and sky, in the 
laws of nature we imagine broken or behold fulfilled? 
Not so, but in that human soul which is more than all 
without. At the breast of divinity in humanity that 
wondrous child was nursed to become the same person, 
whether we call him Son of man or Son of God. Be- 
yond all beside, he has indeed broken the general level 
of history with his Hebrew height. He is a mountain 
unmeasured, a tower not of Babel, whose top reaches 
heaven, and a life we have never been able yet to tran- 
scend. " He represents nobody but himself," said one 
of a vainglorious sage. But there are representative 
men. Man}' have been called Charles, there was but 
one Charlemagne. Some men take possession, like 
spirits, of their neighborhood, country, or kind. Napo- 
leon's army was his arm. All the Buddhists grow out 
of one Buddh ; Mohammed mohammedizes the East. 
New England was once Webster, and South Carolina 
was Calhoun. Every universal or local celebrity illus- 
trates the law. But, on the same principle, what pos- 
session in the best of earth's population for some 
thousands of years Jesus Christ has taken of the hu- 



196 PRINCIPLES. 

man soul, so that the^' and he, as far as his influence 
goes, are one ! 

Is it ill to merge individualities so ? I answer, Every 
noble mind will value most in itself not its peculiarity, 
but the quality it shares ; for this sharing, as it makes 
wealth in the joint-stock corporation and the business 
firm, makes also societ}" and the commonwealth. Our 
individual distinctions are no better than savage orna- 
ments and war-paint. I can respect your proud social 
hedge to keep others out no more than I do Stand- 
ing Bear's necklace of bears ' claws. Our selfishness, 
our separation, our insulated and isolated condition, is 
our sin and woe. If the overleaping by Jesus of the 
bounds of his historic personality to occupy the world's 
consciousness so widel}^ and long be m^^thical, then he 
is a m3^th. But the myth is more alive than ever his 
flesh was ; and if we tr}' to put him back into the strait- 
jacket of a thirty years' bodily form, and reduce him to 
the dimensions of his manger, his cross, and his tomb, 
our criticism is at fault. Jesus was the apparition of 
a year ; but Christ cannot be dated or dispossessed. 
Christianit}^ is not a dogma, but a life and growth. Not 
libert}' of thought, but its misnomer and pale negation, 
is it to say that the Christian life in the current era is 
an antiquated phrase with an obsolete sense. For our 
religion is like the California mine that opens richer the 
more it is wrought. Valor is virtue, said the Roman 
people, and still says the Latin tongue. But the 
strength of the sword-arm in battle has its limit in 
quantity and an ever-stricter measure of worth. The 
new style of morals as well as of the calendar, which our 
Master brought, puts meekness and lowliness for pride 



LIFE. 197 

and wrath. We may talk of its going out of fashion 
when it shall not onl^^ have been generally adopted as 
a habit, but a better garb shall have been devised ! 
Meantime, while none are haughtier, more ambitious, 
quicker to quarrel, and loosen their tongue into more 
unmeasured terms of opprobrium on dissenters and 
foes, than those by whom this old gospel is assailed, 
we shall guess it is a retrograde and no forward move- 
ment which they propose. Jesus " made himself of no 
reputation." Does his critic seek notice? Is he greedy 
of praise and ready to bespeak eulogists of his own 
work? Verih', he is beneath his subject, and disap- 
pointment will be his doom. For the trumpet of fame 
is not an instrument that, like some orchestral band of 
performers, can be hired ! Men ma}^ procure some horn 
of notoriety' for their ambition to blow for a day ; but, 
as only a real honor can fill the ear or be music to the 
heart of mankind, there must be a ground of the 
world's respect for that Jewish teacher who expired, 
yet b}' whom all his censors will be survived, and who 
will be dethroned and displaced only and surely when 
some wiser instructor and worthier soul shall under- 
mine his humility, outcompass his humanity, and over- 
top his praj'er, beating all his dimensions of light and 
grace. We learn from him that life is not a tale that is 
told, as Solomon might say, or even a song of degrees, 
as one or another of David's psalms is called, but an 
element capable of endless refinement, and defying all 
graduation of space and time. 

We are not so many units. There is a human soul, 
which is the source and sum of individual men. We are 
not its creators, but derivatives. It is the onl}^ media- 



198 PRINCIPLES. 

tor between God and us. Poets, prophets, and redeem- 
ers are its blossoms ; and when we say it has had no 
better flowering than in Christ, we mean no prodig}", 
but the rare unfolding of a seed in us all. If we speak 
of our ideal, we do not intend that an^- flesh can hold 
a perfect pattern of beaut}^, goodness, or truth, any 
more than one building can be the shape of all architec- 
tural grandeur and grace. The Greek beauty appeared 
in the Parthenon, German worship reared the cathedral 
at Cologne, and the traveller observes that the obliquity 
of the Chinese edifice repeats that of the Chinese face. 
Our character reproduces our thought ; but our thought 
is harder to trace to its original springs than for past 
ages of exploration has been the river Nile. Surely 
Christianity is one of its undried and unexhausted lakes 
of supply, and Eg3^pt back of Palestine, in the dawn of 
history, is a main confluent stream. 

Life cannot be defined, and only b}^ figures de- 
scribed. It is a boon, a trial, a tragedy, a battle, a 
stream, the wind. The man who, waking " with con- 
scious awe," once more " rejoices to be ; " the sailor-boy 
that " whistles to the morning-star ; " the bobolink that 
flies and sings at once ; the bee that navigates its burly 
form with a buzz, which seems a far-off" echo of the 
bull's murmuring in the field ; and the cock on the fence 
greeting the universe and saj ing good-da}^ to God, — 
have a common life, which in the broken-legged horse 
seems so worthless to him and his owner that he can 
only be shot. Yet the hopeless lunatic, beating the 
bars of his cage, is in a worse condition ; and the com- 
mittees for insane asylums question if for some of the 
patients life is a blessing that ought to be prolonged. 



LIFE. 199 

But the reformer, who suggests the abbreviation of 
an}' miser}' by anodynes, though of a man caught in 
the couplings of the cars, and begging to be put out of 
pain, is like the scout of an army who discharges his 
piece and retreats, although he knows the whole army 
must come up at last. Napoleon cured a mania for 
suicide among his soldiers in their cold sentry-boxes 
by exposing the dead bodies ; and a wholesome shame 
at this disgrace of death, as the Italians call it, should 
make us, even when forlorn, content and patient with 
life, as most of this eating and drinking mortal set 
verily are. We make too much of our afflictions and 
of all we call evil. If it be a bad world and a bad race, 
it is a bad God ! In trouble we must help each other 
out, like comrades amid the snows of the mountain- 
wolds. Leaning over the gunwale of the ship, from 
whose seams the tropic sun boiled out the pitch, and by 
whose side through the blue water floated the brown 
moss of the middle latitudes, which is softer than lace, 
I might in my nervous despair have slipped, but for the 
affection that held me back. Paul said, in the strug- 
gles of his mind with his lot, that he died every day, 
as we do in sleep every night, and yet cannot tell 
what slumber is. Our surve}'ing instruments, as it ap- 
proaches, drop from our hands unawares, and we can- 
not take them up quickly enough to observe what it is 
to awake ! The present writer has died four times, 
having been overlaid in infancy, drowned in youth, run 
over by a train of cars in manhood, and struck by light- 
ning in age. But, for all this experience, he knows no 
better what it is to die. 

Nor do we understand what time is. To Newton 



200 PEINCIPLES. 

among his problems, or Webster musing on the Marsh- 
field shore, it is one thing, and quite another to Presi- 
dent Washington when he reproves Hamilton for mak- 
ing him wait ten minutes. I should now be old as 
Methuselah, had every day been as long to me as that 
well-remembered one when the doctor, threescore years 
ago, wrapped his bandanna handkerchief around his 
forceps to extract my tooth ; and I should be a sort of 
ephemeron had all my life passed as rapidly as have 
some of its pleasant hours, when the clock seemed 
striking aU the time, so swift is joy ! 

While there is any position for us left we shall live. 
No thing can be spared, and no person. Should an 
atom crumble, the universe would fall into the hole ! 
An effete moon or lost pleiad were a small ruin com- 
pared to an annihilated mind. Our vast hopes and 
plans savor of immortality. "I should like," said 
a child, "to be very rich." "What for?" asked the 
mother. " To pay the national debt," the little one re- 
plied. " I want to see this thing through," said Josiah 
Quincy, as our civil conflict roared around him in his 
old age. The triumph of justice and truth is in our 
instinctive faith ; but how long must we live for that? 
Coeur de Lion, in the tournament at Ashby, or at the 
siege of Front de Boeuf 's castle, we feel must prevail. 
Freedom knows that bondage, as they wrestle together, 
must be under and go down ; and a man with a moral 
inspiration is persuaded he shall overcome his foe. 
Does the soul so measure itself with death? Yes, in 
its very dawn! When a king dies he lies in state. 
Egypt gave him a pyramid for his tomb. When a pope 
dies, art goes to sketch every detail of the situation 



LIFE. 201 

of the defunct vicar of God. When our martyr-presi- 
dent dies, his body, with a procession of forty milHon 
mourners, is borne tlirough the land. But God loves 
a babe as well as he does any one of them ; and while we 
pray to him over the cold clay, does he not pray to us, 
entreating us to hope and trust ? It is a bitter cup we 
have to drink ; but only a cup can be bitter, and the 
fountain is sweet. ' ' Whom God deceives," sa}' s Goethe, 
*' is well deceived ; " but that life should not be an illusion 
concerns the honor of God ! " My bereavement," said 
a mother over her dead child, " must be right, else he 
could not have withstood my praj^ers ! " Will he raise 
false expectations ? ' ' Do 3^ou believe men are immor- 
tal ? " Abraham Lincoln was once asked. ' ' All or none,'* 
he replied. It is not any peculiarity of our selves, which 
when separate are alwa^'s small, from which our title 
can be derived, but the common property of our race. 



202 PRINCIPLES. 



VIII. 
BUSINESS. 

WHEN, apart or together, men spend strength of 
head or hand for some definite result, they 
work. If capital or credit be added, overplus of gain 
or accumulation contemplated, and permanence in one 
occupation maintained, the}' do business. If the ele- 
ment of risk, which is always involved, enter largely, 
the business is speculative . It becomes gambling if they 
make rash ventures, snatch at chance prizes, take un- 
fair advantages, aim at sudden or premature success, and 
trust to luck. Business is so far a lottery in modern life 
as to make it our main concern to observe those busi- 
ness principles which reach wider than any nationalit}^, 
form of government, or religion. The Exchange runs 
beyond any British drum-beat around the world. In 
every cit}^ what important characters are the banker and 
broker, to loan money, compare and dispose of property, 
and watch that thermometer of the stock-board, more 
restless than that of spirit or quicksilver in the glass 
tube ! The rise and fall in worth of any regular spe- 
cies of possession is determined b}" causes so extended 
and subtle as to try the sagacit}' of the wisest mind. 
A foi'eseer of the fluctuation might make a milhon dol- 
lars ever}^ week. The kings of railwa3's, mills, or for- 
eign merchandise are limited monarchs, and liable to 



BUSINESS. 203 

be deposed. There are more business failures than po- 
litical overthrows, defeats in coui't, or disappointments 
in love. Daniel "Webster, than whom no man better 
understood the legal aspects of property', declared there 
is no such science as political economj' ; and an actuary 
of one of our greatest institutions for the care of riches, 
himself an eminent lawyer for fifty years, said he did 
not pretend to any comprehension of finance. How 
many otherwise intelligent men have been confused 
b}' discussions of the silver-bill, resumption of specie- 
pa3'ment, issue of greenbacks as legal-tender, till all 
moral standards about mone}^ are thrown down, and we 
are content to conclude that of a national debt only the 
interest is secure in England, France, and the United 
States. The private conscience is corrupted b}' public 
repudiation, and by the example set by a nation of 
a parti}' counterfeit coin, Avhich the individual forger 
only adulterates a few grains more. Pecuniar}' right or 
wrong is made the accident of legislation, and a color is 
given by government to every unrighteous theory and 
extravagant Scheme. As the hungry wayfarer plucks 
another man's fruit rather than starve, a people in peril 
will insist on owning and owing every thing, on being 
debtor and creditor in one, and forcing all the riches of 
the community to rotate to one spot at its own will, 
rather than give up the ghost ! But the medicine of 
the constitution becomes poison when used as its daily 
bread ; and if we have warped our rules in battle, let 
us straighten them in peace. 

For business has no peculiarity properly exempting 
it from ethical rules applicable to domestic, civil, or ec- 
clesiastical aflairs. It is alike amenable to the law of 



204 PRINCIPLES. 

truth, never in its favor to be repealed. The ship-owner 
who told the insurer not to make out the bespoken policy 
because his vessel had been heard from, he having 
learned she was lost and knowing the polic}^ wouki be 
pressed upon him, as it immediatel}' was, sacrificed his 
veracity to his case. The importer, eager to sell dam- 
aged copperas to his customer who hoped the dealer 
had not heard of a rise in the article abroad, bit the 
neighbor who was trying to bite him, and both pla^-ed 
each other false. The dealer who hides defects and 
heightens the virtues in his goods, and goes then to 
church to glorify the truth in a doxology or collect of 
pra3^er, worships mammon and makes an idol of God. 
If I chant or cheapen wares of m}^ own or another's, 
what odds does it make whether they be roads and 
blocks of building or sour fruit on an apple-stand? 
What signifies the size of your operation when an un- 
fair purpose renders it small just in proportion as it is 
large? You ma}^ handle Erie or Hudson or Pennsyl- 
vania Central or New York and Hartford ; but if 3'ou 
do it in disguise, let me stand in the shoes of the poor 
woman who puts the biggest oranges on top, or turns 
the rotten peach inside, or is tempted to count eleven 
for twelve, rather than in the seven-leagued boots you 
play the highwa3aiian and freebooter in, as 3'Ou travel, 
and hurr3" to ruin others, and damn yourself! A man 
is a swindler who offers a mortgage on real estate that 
does not exist. What shall we say of the atrocity of 
selling bonds to pay for building the railway which is 
made the basis, when it is but begun and runs to com- 
pletion onl3^ in the scheming brain, while the stacks of 
linen paper in handsome print are shuffled and dealt like 



BUSINESS. 205 

packs of cards, and held under lock and key in trunks 
and safety- vaults, as if an}^ robber would touch them, 
knowing what they are and that no hand will ever be 
tired cutting off with scissors their promising coupons ? 
Treasurers and bank-presidents, who confound in their 
transactions their official capacit}' with their personal 
wants, and trade on the funds in their hands or use the 
credit of the corporation to prevent or break their fall, 
do in their guilt}' selves accuse of a dishonored and de- 
graded condition the community in which they can hold 
up their heads. We have come to that state in which 
it is held by some judges a cruelty and an outrage when 
a thief is imprisoned or a defalcator pursued ; but not 
from the emptied pockets do the loud apologies and 
sentimental pleas for swindling proceed ! In the first 
and least departure from candor all enormity of evil 
has its germ. He who saj^s business is business and 
religion is religion, to advocate their divorce, reall}' 
says business is fraud, just as one says all is fair in poli- 
tics ; and he who says there is no friendship in trade 
makes trade a worse hell than Calvin ever consigned 
heretics to, and blasphemes. God's decree that all true 
trade is friendship, and no bargain should be made in 
which both parties are not better off. If in certain cir- 
cumstances, as is alleged, a man must cheat or starve, 
then let us have the starvation ; for one instance of in- 
tegrity so sublime would outweigh the effect of millions 
in the Indian famine. Starvers, as once were beggars, 
would become an order in the church, their mart3^rdom 
grander than that of the stake or the cross. There is 
plent}' of amiabilit}^ ; but our heart-strings are limp, re- 
laxed from rectitude. The}' need to be wound up by 



206 PRINCIPLES. 

conscience, and toned and tuned to humane conduct. 
We do not want any confessors of the old stamp or new 
professors of poverty, but saints on 'Change and suf- 
ferers for convictions that are better than any creed. 
When an EngUsh Lord forsook the liberal party and 
called their notions cant. Earl Russell answered, " There 
is no cant so bad as the re-cant of patriotism." It is 
a poor dress of righteousness that will not stand any 
moral climate, but has to be put off and laid aside to 
suit custom and fashion in particular latitudes. It is 
not the wedding-garment, opening heaven to the guest. 
Yet who expects absolute verity on both sides in a 
bargain? Of the cunning that gave them the advan- 
tage how many will boast ! They got that furniture or 
picture from the distressed owner or ignorant dealer for 
such a pitiful price, concealing their knowledge and joy 
under cold indifference, and a mask of unwinking eyes, 
and pretending their purchase was naught : mean and 
forsworn h3^pocrites that they are, instead of the no- 
ble masters of knowledge for which they would pass ! 
" Let him find out for himself; 'tis not m}' business to 
tell him the age of my horse, texture of my stuff, lien 
on my land, or goodness of m}'^ note of hand ! " So by 
successive touches the sharper, who is own cousin to 
the trickster, whets his tool. " What do 3'Ou pretend 
to ask ? " is thought a respectful question, as if 3^ou had 
a price jou expected to come down from, and there 
were a false bottom in every contract, when God fixes 
the principle of barter in the fact that something each 
has is worth more to the other, and the only equity is 
to find out how much. Hucksters' Row, to which I was 
sent as a boy, in the town where I lived, to fetch pur- 



BUSINESS. 207 

chases home, is a long street and runs through all the 
cities of the world ! Not only mendacit}', but waste of 
talent and time is in all the subterfuges and demands 
of this bantering and chaffering style ; and the great 
Judge will call us to account for the loss of life and 
faculty in this deceitful crying up and crying down, 
which puts a useless or devilish diligence for productive 
industry, and in the competitions of the great auction 
which business becomes, stirs so much ill-blood, and 
substitutes for strife with guns and fists but a new war 
of words. 

Religion is the recognition in every negotiation of 
the third part}', the unseen witness and silent member 
in the firm, that makes his record and prepares his 
award of destin}' after the measures of earthl}' right and 
wrong. Said an old law^'er, " I never knew one sharp 
who was not apt to be unfair ; taking the advantage in 
that border-land of felon}-, where the legal is not sel- 
dom the immoral way." But merchant-princes, like 
Job, become rich not by trickery, but by large views, 
original plans, and humane desires to unite in mutual 
benefit the ends of the earth, while commonly but 
a small success is got by shoving and keeping others 
out, like that of the California photographer who, hav- 
ing taken an impression of a cataract, cut down the , 
splendid trees beside it which were part of the picture 
he would monopolize for his own sale. He alone can 
greatly prosper who makes others thrive with him, not 
as a destroyer but creator of natural wealth by human 
art, opening treasure from the bowels of the earth and 
turning the rivers into laborers without fatigue, the 
Penobscot as a sawyer, the Merrimack as a weaver, the 



208 PRINCIPLES. 

Nashua as a knitter, and Niagara as a spinner that 
could move all the wheels in the world as a water- 
power. " TJiat is not business," said a generous trader, 
when he saw one running to and fro betwixt rival aspi- 
rants for a bit of real estate, and spurring them to bid 
and bet while he refused to fix any price. Business is 
or may be not only true, just, and humane, but poetic, 
imagination being the eye to see values of certain 
kinds. Let me relate a case that has occurred a hun- 
dred times. A man bought a promontory of rock jut- 
ting into the sea, and cut in two by a valley of barren 
blowing sand. All the neighbors declared he would 
come out of his purchase only with a broken skin, and 
the experts from State Street keenest in affairs com- 
miserated his mistake, and feared he would never be 
whole.. But while five hundred millions of railway 
bonds were stopping paj^ment in the land, the sea- 
washed crags stood, and drew those who loved Nature 
for something more than the grass and potatoes she 
could bring forth, even for the eternal magnificence of 
her ideal charms. There is a market for beauty, and 
sublimity has its worth and can be quoted, while be- 
yond all price, though so man}' an acute operator 
despise the article and cannot for his life tell what it 
means. But the old billows roll on their sounding way, 
and the shores abide, and the planted woods grow, as 
one balloon after another of speculation bursts and 
throws the aeronaut limping to the ground, while the 
buj^er of brambles and stones ceases to be considered 
as a fool, is credited with having a long head though 
with no skill, but a simple love of scenery ; and the 
character of fancy property shifts from his beaches and 



BUSINESS. 209 

rocks to the factories and iron roads. Even a man's 
theolog}^ may rise with his house-lots. What in his 
thoughts had been branded as moonshine ma}' become 
sober realit}', as Shakspeare tells us the moonlight 
sleeps upon a bank, and the useful planet we so pro- 
fanel}' use as a tj'pe of hollowness la^'s her steady 
lustre on the solid ground. Heresy is condoned by 
business sagacity. 

Business is religion in this, that its enterprises, to 
stand and last, must with a prudent judgment conform 
to all the laws of the mind and the world. Whence the 
crash of ruin and the long prostration from which it 
takes so many years to get up ? Violated conditions of 
progress and of permanent possession show the cause. 
With over-sanguine hope the present borrows of the 
future and then has to wait, unable to pa}^ the debt. 
In enforced inactivit}' it lies long in jail ! Anticipating 
freight and passengers that do not exist and will not 
for a score of 3 ears be raised and born, our stations 
rot and our rails rust in the rain. Manufactured 
cloths, which nobod}' is begotten to wear, lie piled up on 
the shelf till the hum of the spindles is checked b}^ their 
weight. The responsibility is not on the waste of war 
alone, nor on wrong legislation, nor on the hard times 
with whose name we cover our sins, but on avaricious 
propert}', on the love of mone}' transgressing the law of 
real increase, and ending in bubbles of nominal value 
that like whirlwinds or waterspouts break in ruin. 
Capital, depraved by greed, like ^sop's dog, grasps 
at the shadow and drops the substance in the stream, 
while signs of value fall below their mark as represent- 
ing power to purchase actual good, like half-emptied 

14 



210 PEINCIPLES. 

vessels, or ponds that diy up in the summer heat ; and 
labor looks on jealous of the wit that, like a black art, 
multiplies the signs in the hands of their possessors, 
labor's dollar being still heavy and hard to lift, till 
strikes like thunderbolts assail the show}' fabric of pros- 
perity, and the spectre of communism throws petroleum 
in Paris and in Pittsburg blocks the trains. Nor is the 
organ of destructiveness in the human brain stirred by 
an}' intent of capital to oppress labor, so much as by 
the rupture of sympathy and separation of the capitalist 
and laborer into separate classes, so that, under all our 
fine republican and democratic names, society is cut in 
twain, and the community ceases to exist. The employer 
knows not how his servant lives, or what he thinks ; 
Christianity becomes a form in the cathedral, and for 
human fellowship we have ministries for the poor. 

Universal suffrage, unless enlightened, fails to cure 
the disease. No man is born free ; and no two, though 
twin, are equal or alike. What a trail of heritage and 
bond of necessity are peculiar to every child ! " Glit- 
tering generalities" be they, or "blazing ubiquities," 
that we launched as lightnings at political tyranny a 
century ago, with a just claim that all should stand 
equal before the law, yet the whole truth of nature 
cannot be contained in French maxims or a Jeffersonian 
phrase. By divine decree one man will occupy more 
room than another with his body or soul. The kings 
that know and can^ and the nobles best to rule, are not 
titular, with thrones for seats and crowns for hats, any 
more than the queen-bee is such in a hive or the bell- 
wether of the flock. He that has the eloquence sways 
the audience, and he that is born to command, Cortes 



BUSINESS. 211 

or Cromwell, leads the troop. In the senate of gods 
is Jupiter, and Webster in that of men. We must 
have leading, if there be any ducal power, to attend on 
the ballot ; and the millennium will not come simpl}^ 
because women vote, as they ought, like men. Is the 
clown injured and downtrod because the inventor has 
his patent and the author his copyright? Does not the 
honor of genius and stimulus to discovery bless both 
low and high? O friend, insisting thou art good as 
anybod}', blazon th}' duties and reserve tli}" rights if 
thou wilt not be bad ! Jesus and Judas merit not the 
same weight in Church or State. The insurgent motto 
is not true, that he is born well who is born at all ; for, 
says the Master, the betra^-er had better not have been 
born. Until we learn how much we have to do with 
right or wrong birth, and that God no more makes a 
human creature than a plant outright, using the dust as 
his dough, this dreadful span of beaut}' with deformity 
for the world's team will last, and degenerate offspring 
through the whole race of idiots ranging into mon- 
sters will come unwelcome on the earth. Appl}' the 
doctrine of evolution handsomely' as you will to the 
beast, horse, cow, dog, and hen for a better breed, yet it 
will not signif}^ to save us from our self-created hells of 
jails and asylums for the ingrained wicked and insane. 
I believe in God, but that he puts men into their own and 
each other's hands. After all our clamor for indepen- 
dence, with its echo of guns and crackers to split our 
ears on the Fourth of July, how would it do to adopt the 
engraving on the old German shield, and serve a lit- 
tle, instead of being so free? For what but to be forty 
millions of servants have we Uberated four milUons of 



212 PRINCIPLES. 

slaves ? All men are born to further one another and 
to deny themselves for that grander self of a living 
truth and love which they should worship, and in 
which the}^ are one. 

This is business, the only sort in which we should be 
engaged ; and this alone is the joy which no fine for- 
tune or fair site in nature can confer, though all the 
waves clap their hands to 3'ou, and the trees wave their 
branches and rustle their leaves. If you have no poise 
or projection of power, time shall be the old man of the 
mountain on 3'our neck. I will not go to heaven unless 
there be some errands for me there ! Let whoso under- 
takes in this land to abolish mountain and vale in favor 
of the level and the swamp beware ! Voters are led ; 
and it is well that among so-called independent char- 
acters nine out of ten lack-wits should be in leading- 
strings. Find my conductor, and I will follow. Apollo, 
not Marsyas, shall teach me poetry and song ; Milton 
shall dictate my politics, not Salmasius or Charles I. ; 
and the wise man or the village- Washington for any 
measure of improvement shall put a town-meeting to 
shame. In that same primary assembly, which is our 
boast, our tyranny lies. The highway-robber long ago 
dropped visor and holster ; but what a smooth citizen or 
blustering demagogue, in this ever-shifting masquerade 
which we call life, he has become ! We are committed to 
the ballot in every hand, like a fleet to the gale. But as 
many a cannon's weight is rolled across the deck of the 
careening frigate to the other side, so our ship of State 
must be kept from foundering through our counter- 
balance of indiscriminate civil privilege by conserva- 
tive tons of knowledge, religious principle, culture in 



BUSINESS. 213 

art, and mutual respect. " You should have been born 
in St. Petersburg a half-centur}' ago," it was said to one 
who doubted the genius of the populace for finance. 
But we are not driven to choose betwixt despots and 
the rabble rout. If it is the intelligence, not the igno- 
rance we represent, wisdom will be at the helm ; and 
business is one half of legislation and of the judicial 
coui't. Let us follow the light of reason more than of 
the ecclesiastical indoctrination which scatters that light 
into part3'-colors, even as the stained windows of the 
temple, with the blue, red, and green they so impiously 
strain the sun into, render it impossible for dim e^^es to 
read the Prayer-book or the Bible, turn the stone shrine 
into a sepulchre, and make corpses of the men and 
women, all from shutting out the natural day. A holy 
worshipper in his own house said, "When the sun 
reaches the spire yonder across the street, it throws a 
shadow into my room ! " Was darkness on the inside of 
a building intended as the final issue when the first altar 
was reared? Better go back to the time of outward 
offering, to Abel's sacrifice or Cain's on the broad earth 
and under the open sky, than paint the glass of the 
sanctuary, or for spiritualist revelations lower the gas 
and shut the blinds. Ghosts in the churchyard may 
love the twilight, but so does not God. To him is no 
darkness ; and Adam fled into the thicket when he 
would not feel his presence or own his voice because 
he had disobe3'ed his word. 

But business is religious, because religion is justice 
betwixt men as well as prayer to God ; and justice be- 
yond arithmetical calculation includes a S3'mpathetic 
imagination in either party to a contract, to take the 



214 PRINCIPLES. 

other's point of view, and so obey that Golden Rule 
which in our Gold Room we dail}^ break, till the fine 
gold loses its value, and becomes dim. Every metal 
whose handling is immoral becomes worthless in itself. 
There can be no equit}^ of procedure or of intent till 
the dealer look out of the customer's eyes as well as his 
own ; and no worship at Mount Gerizim or at Jerusa- 
lem is loftier than such a look. Was it higher in Jesus 
to kneel the whole night than to gaze at himself out of 
his crucifiers' eyes, so as to understand their ignorance, 
and pray for pardon to their sin? It is a large view 
when we can behold ourselves as we are beheld in our 
doings by all whom we meet ; and poverty, which is 
intrinsically no better than riches, is not the necessary 
result of that survey. Extent of vision is a main con- 
dition commonly of being rich ; and by selfish stickling 
for little advantages over our neighbor, how small our 
horizon becomes ! There were rich men for James the 
Apostle to rail at. But the opulent are not always sin- 
ners, nor the destitute always saints. Love enlarges 
power, and we are debilitated and impoverished by 
hate. But how meagre does absorption in gain, al- 
beit immense, make the man ! When we see him, a 
silver bar seems to run for a stricture across his fore- 
head and to press on his eyes, whose lids contract to let 
out only that twinkle of light which suits his sordid 
aim. When, in his sickness, incompetenc}^, or age, the 
tide of aflTairs ebbs away, how helpless and wretched he 
is left ! What miserable millionnaires, not knowing what 
to do with themselves, we have seen ! I remember one, 
with his jaundiced face and thin gray hair at fourscore 
braided over his head, who complained, when he could 



BUSINESS. 215 

no longer do business, that life had lost its savor and 
become stale. He was a brief appendix to his vast 
accumulation. He had cultivated no love for nature or 
art, he cared not for society', and there was in him no 
rehsh for books. Communion with matter had driven 
spirit out. Yet mammon became a " dull god " to wor- 
ship when the pile no longer grew. His mind, instead 
of being full like his purse, by dint of long pumping 
out of that vital air, which devotion or an}^ generous 
affection is, could only suggest the exhausted receiver, 
which we cannot contemplate in the curious experiment 
without a sort of pain. Mental and moral vacuum, a 
soul like the old chaotic earth without form and void, 
what an upshot of a life, and what an account-book, if 
there be any last assizes, to carry to the bar ! 

Business denotes our activity in every form. Every 
mechanical, professional, official, or literary person is 
busy, — artist and engineer, ruler and subject, alike. 
What is money but 77ieans, sustenance in peace or sin- 
ews of war, the corner-stone without which the pillars 
of the commonwealth tremble and there is nothing to 
uphold, and s3'nagogue and s3'nod must come to the 
ground? Wealth, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad 
master ; and it takes a hero to collar and force it to 
its use. It is written of Morton, the great Indiana 
war-governor, that before he was a United States Sen- 
ator, when a hostile legislature adjourned without ap- 
propriating money with which to carrj'^ on the State 
government, he borrowed two millions of dollars on his 
personal assurance, kept the civil machiner}' in motion, 
and paid prompt^ the interest of the debt ; and when 
the thunder-clouds from North and South met, he sent 



216 PRINCIPLES. 

two hundred thousand soldiers into the field. Money 
as the guard of law, the maul against secession, and 
sword of execution on slavery, as well as new under- 
pinning and prop of libert}', is no root of evil when for 
such ends it is loved and used. The draft on its treas- 
ury^which such a patriot and philanthropist makes shall 
be honored at a bank that never breaks. No spectacle 
is more noble than when a State for righteousness fol- 
lows a man, as Indiana did Morton, and Massachusetts 
did Andrew, and California did King. Then the soul 
sits sceptred, and we learn the meaning of the text, 
that " the meek shall inherit the earth," which is but a 
causeway to heaven. 

For business, in the sense of what one can be in or 
out of, is incidental. It is irreligious if made the end 
or even the means of wealth instead of the test of worth, 
and but one in our chest of character-building tools. 
The play is for the soul ; and all the outward plans and 
exchangeable results are but like the figures on the 
board betwixt the youth and Satan, in the allegorical 
game of chess. Saith the Spirit, no man has his price, 
and no woman can be bought or sold. No virtue is in 
pawn. We sometimes see a face in whose expression 
is disdain of fortune, like an eagle's scorn of the 
ground, and which no bribe would dare approach. It 
is not culture, but nature. When the poor sailor was 
offered a reward for saving a man from drowning at the 
risk of his own life, what moved him to say that a 
Marblehead boy will not do such a thing for money, 
but the feeling that any pay, though it were paradise, 
taints the nobility of our deed? Between the venal and 
the unpui-chasable runs the hue and yawns the unpass- 



BUSINESS. 217 

able gulf. No assumption and make the selfish and 
self-sacrificing to be peers without overthrowing the 
judgment-seat. The doctrine of animal descent includes, 
among many lessons, this, that one man no more than 
one beast matches another, and that human neighbors 
or fellow-creatures and fellow-citizens ma}' be no more 
alike than a sloth is to a beaver, a caterpillar to a silk- 
worm, or a potato-bug to a bee. Jesus classifies, and 
predicts classification for ever, into goats and sheep, 
vipers and doves. The human form or animal life can, 
no more than the vegetable, identify the individuals b}'' 
whom it is worn, or prove them more than plants to be 
excellent alike. The deadly nightshade, apple-peru, or 
poisonous ivy is not as good and fair as the lilj', balm 
of Gilead, and rose. We may all have equal right, but 
not right to equal room. The career is open to talent, 
said Napoleon, and the chief talent is virtue. Busi- 
ness is its principal sphere, in which, however, all in- 
iquity watches its chance. 

To have some business in the world, and to mind 
one's own, is our dignit}' and only reason for being. 
AYith what grace that Englishwoman who recited Shak- 
speare rn our ears, being called out at the end of her 
readings, said, "I cannot make a speech, it is not in 
my book." To find and follow where the finger of na- 
ture points is the sum of education ; and into what 
more than orchestral harmony, under that conductor, 
all earthl}' occupations would come ! Nature is the 
grace of God in the world and the soul, and naught is 
unnatural but folly and sin. 

But afl^ah's are still what a turbulent sea ! One man 
holds the key to release his brother's estate ; and, 



218 PRINCIPLES. 

though it has cost him but little, he wiU sell it how 
dear ! Another man no treasure can tempt to a cruel 
use of strength, or to alter one word he has said. 
' ' You lose five hundred dollars by 3'our dainty and 
delicate notions of propriety"," one was told. " I should 
have lost more than that by being less honorable to my 
rival," he replied. To save bodily life, men on a wreck 
have offered all they possessed ; and to save themselves, 
men have left wife or child to perish as they swam from 
the sinking ship. What means our contempt for such 
abandonment of others and preservation of self, but 
consciousness of a principle which no flood can drown, 
which, out of every deserted corse going as lead to the 
bottom or afloat helpless on the wave, will get safe to 
shore, and call the recreant to account ! Immortality 
is a moral necessity. Eternity is not too long for illus- 
tration of the truth that our business in time is self- 
denial for each other's sake. 

The fact that our business sins are so in excess of all 
other transgressions shows that acquisitiveness is the 
propensity most overstrained. Ever3'body speculates. 
Men on fixed salaries, clerks in banks and mills, are 
tempted by the ventures into which their employers 
plunge, to use for their own ventures their employers' 
means. These little figures in the columns can so 
easily be counted up wrong, and these notes and papers 
that represent value are so light and readily shifted, 
and houses and lands, ships and goods, factories and 
roads, in this printed form, can be so quickly put in 
one's pocket and carried so far away, and the time 
may be so long before the exchange or misreckoning is 
found out, that by facile opportunity all but the abso- 



BUSINESS. 219 

lutelj' upright are seduced to take a hand in the vast 
stake played for on the table of chance, as if gambling 
were not outlawed, so that protection of property'' is the 
unsolved question of the da}-. Who shall guard its 
guards? An immense evil in all worldh^ values, under 
the spur of this eager pursuit, is their uncertain rate. 
It would seem that a quite honest dollar cannot be 
found ; and those who tamper with the currenc}', and 
would make its volume like an}- book with as many 
pages as are wanted from the printing-press, plead the 
fluctuation of gold ; metal or parchment, greenback or 
consol, is but a representative whose realit}^ does not 
exist ! P3-rrhonism has left the schools and gone upon 
'Change. Hence the melancholy waste of faculty on 
the universal and insoluble problem of the worth of 
things. Ever}' species of stock rises and sinks. There 
is no bottom and no top. The bulls push and the 
bears pull ! What an amount of strength, that might 
be emplo^^ed in production, is wasted in calculation of 
sums that have continuallj' to be done over again, and 
never come out altogether right ! Arithmetical ac- 
counts, books of double entr}' and geometric survej's, 
before such exhausting tasks, are vain to help ; and 
what thousands are demoralized in this laborious idle- 
ness, and turned into busy drones ! No wonder that 
man}', grinding thus like millstones without a grist, 
become crazed, and some Napoleon of commerce, for 
whom his millions have proved too much, from the long 
puzzle of the market goes with a turned head to count 
imaginar}" mone}' in a mad-house. Man, as merchant 
onl}^, " walketh in a vain show." M}- friend, in the 
press of affairs heaping up wealth which appears 



220 PRINCIPLES. 

only in shares on the corporations' books, calls a bar- 
ren cliff by the sea fancy propert3\ But his is fanciful 
and the cliff real : for there is somewhat permanent and 
unchangeable in the beauty where the soul takes its 
dail}^ bath, — in the horizon whose exquisite line of the 
meeting land and sea and wood-girdled hill does not 
waver ; in the sky from whose inverted cup, as a horn 
of plent}" to heart and imagination, daily blessings come ; 
and even in the charming phenomenon of the tide, so 
punctual although never at rest ; and in the perpetual 
and pervading glory, out of which life even as a shadow 
is cast, — while the possessions on which you can real- 
ize are more unsubstantial and cloudy than any vapor 
that floats overhead through the air. 

Abject poverty is a curse and a provocation to crime. 
But unbounded personal appropriation of the signs 
and symbols of wealth is the very lunac};^ of conceit. 
Riches are good for what we can do with them ; but 
if we do nothing but invest and reinvest, using them 
with no generous design for others' benefit, but onl}'- as 
so much seed-corn and so many nest-eggs to produce 
more, we impoverish our fellows and might as well be 
poor ourselves. The miser is a pauper, his counting- 
room a poor-house ; and the worst sort of beggary will 
be the end and upshot of his destitution of love. None 
at last need charity so much as do they by whom it has 
never been shown ! This keen scent for gain leaves 
little conscience. The sharp man will be a sharper, 
and how near to being dishonest is he who is close-! 
Road and bank presidents, with enterprises outside 
their office, are tempted to divert corporate or public 
funds, in their hands or at their command, to their pri- 



BUSINESS. 221 

vate risks. The accommodator and the accommodated, 
the lender and the borrower, are one man ! It is a dan- 
gerous position ; and thoughtful business men are begin- 
ning to ask if directors are not biassed, and whether 
a president is more safe for being a Croesus of large 
and manifold concerns. 

Moderation is the lesson taught from all this en- 
forced commercial stagnation. Intemperate undertak- 
ings strengthen no more than liquors that make drunk. 
How hard in this country we have worked to get poor ! 
Business-mania is that sort of fever on whose heat 
debility attends ; and we should have been richer to- 
day had we thought less of riches. Jehu, driving* the 
chariot, is upset. How slowl}^ and leisurely the car off 
the track is pried back ! Ten 3'ears it takes for our 
business-train to get in motion again. The correction 
and cure for the business man is to have something be- 
side his affairs to take up his thought. When one has 
so much to do that he cannot attend to important mat- 
ters or fulfil friendly relations outside the bargains he 
shoves and is pushed into a corner and impounded by, 
he is not doing his business well, and we need not be 
surprised if he fail. Only by a decent culture of all 
the faculties can the mind's balance be preserved ; and 
b}^ its inward poise will outward footing be kept. One 
ma}' as easih' lop a bodil}' member and not go one- 
sided or lame, as starve his intellect and depopulate his 
imagination, 3'et have good judgment remain ; and any 
warping or neglect of the moral sense will but aggra- 
vate the mischief. Other things being equal, we may 
trust the banker who loves the fine art that is above his 
finance, cherishes some exquisite taste and follows 



222 PRINCIPLES. 

some branch of pure knowledge, rather than the one 
who, having only room for scales in his brain, will 
surely also have scales on his eyes. To prevent the 
creeping of cataract over the spiritual vision, we must 
not look out for worldly advantage till our gaze be- 
comes a dazing stare, but practise ourselves to behold 
truth in all her forms. To our vocation let us add an 
avocation if we would keep sane. 

Some great affection for God or his creatures is need- 
f\il too. Atrophy of the heart has been at the bottom 
of how much earthl}^ niggardliness ! Let love be a 
hoard and hive for others, not ourselves, and we shall 
be spendthrifts in no sense, but economists in all, and, 
in Charles Lamb's expression, keep poverty at a sub- 
limer distance than if we had the exchequer of a king. 
Our Senator Sumner said he had never dipped his hand 
into the United States treasury, 3'et who held him 
poor ? Truly there is a fortune that has no wheel ! 

Business is God's grace to man, with all its errors 
and enormities on its head. If science be the ruling 
queen, business is the modern king. Its activities are 
worth more than its gains, as that good merchant saw 
who only wished for his children as much happiness in 
spending as his had been in earning his estate. It is 
time to have done with decrying riches and success. 
Professors of poverty exist no longer in the Catholic 
Church, nor can the beggars of the Middle Ages again 
become a political force. There is no virtue in being 
shoeless, or not having where to lay one's head. Doubt- 
less there are God's poor ; but he has his rich, too, who 
are just as good and perhaps more strong for his 
service. The apostle James, launching his thunders 



BUSINESS. 223 

against rich men, missed his Master's point, who bade 
his disciples not la}' up treasure for themselves. Disin- 
terested acquisition of knowledge or wealth is the sum- 
mit of character. Unhappy man who gathers and 
broods over his selfish store ! He is outranked in 
merit by the hen scratching for her 3'oung, b}^ the 
swallow bearing a worm to the eaves of the barn for 
her nestling, and b}^ the grub and beetle rolling up a 
provision, though in a ball of dung, for their offspring. 
The solitary and loveless human creature whom I saw 
pick up ordure on the highwa}^ in a pail, while he had 
in the bank thousands of dollars too sacred to touch, 
is the t3'pe of all the misers who, with clean hands and 
a decent demeanor, do dirtier things. These are but 
exceptions. Most business men are too intent on great 
results to stoop to the tricks of trade. From a million 
spokes turning, and mjriad hoofs striking the ground, 
some dust will fall, and some fire fly. But the immense 
operation is benign, to educate powers to surpass all 
issues of worldly profit and loss ; and the contributions 
b}' business men of material aid for ever}' want of soci- 
ety-, need of the Church, or emergenc}' of the State have 
been so timely and large that the preacher who denounces 
mone3'-making as profane and the bawling lecturer who 
scores bond-holders as the laborer's foes, were their 
words potential, would but tear down the posts on which 
their pulpit and platform are reared. What matters, 
O radical, whom 3'ou hate, if 3'ou hate? God is not 
poor, but abundant in means ; and the opulent are as 
akin to him in nature, while more like in condition, 
than the destitute. If the reformer and ostensible friend 
of the forsaken have enmit3' in his heart, it will reach 



224 PRiNCirLES. 

the class he favors as well as that he resists. If the 
Irishman wishes to crowd and trample on the African 
or Chinaman, that has a lower place and a harder strug- 
gle than himself, as the house-slave used to visit the 
field-slave with his contempt, with what face can he 
pretend to be a philanthropist, while he cares onl}^ for 
his own clan? In the eyes of those he flatters he is 
cloven-footed, and makes a travelling show of himself, 
yet is useful to run into the ground the arguments of 
the demagogue, who in politics is more cunning than 
he. He is the same rogue and blusterer as the one in 
broadcloth, only he is by his coarser speech more 
exposed. 

Business is sanctified by a motive for private welfare 
and for the public good ; and the pecuniary thus goes 
along as a fast friend with the moral capital of the hu- 
man race. AE the winnings, having whatever repre- 
sentation on earth, will be consumed or swept away ; 
but the principles developed by ephemeral transactions 
will abide. 

The merchant is a man in whom prudence is com- 
bined with enterprise for a forecast, to whose fruits he 
is entitled as much as a candidate at the patent-office 
with his invention, or an author to a reward for his 
book ; and he is to dispose of these fruits at his will. 
In charity the merit is cheerful giving, and the impor- 
tunate philanthropist, who will take our dollar in any 
other fashion, is the last robber on the highwa}' ! In 
this world it is a race of wits. As in the yacht-squad- 
ron, all do not get prizes, nor are the prizes all equal, 
nor have the crowd a right to wrest away any that is 
fairly won. God makes men to differ in faculty and 



BUSINESS. 225 

fortune, and neither their bodies nor their minds can be 
made alike. A mob has never yet reigned ; and the 
serpent of communism, more threatening than the one 
Eve talked with in Eden, now rearing its crest, would 
bring not plent}', but poverty, to ever3'bod3^ with its 
universal mob law. 

But the true merchant will be forbearing as well as 
just, and consider it a libel on his business to say that 
the uttermost farthing must be exacted and the last of 
the fort}' stripes fall. Commerce is a high school, a col- 
lege better than Oxford or Cambridge, to educate con- 
science. But equity has a higher law than legality, and 
a larger measure than our dues in dollars and cents ; 
and he who spurns or rejoices to outstrip his halting or 
timid competitors, nor will ever lend a hand but to take 
advantage when the}' slip, though he be square with 
every statute a lawyer could quote, plunders and does 
not earn. There is an admission fatal to the dignity, 
and even right to exist, of any calling in the assertion 
that it offers for any virtue of kindness or mercy no 
soil to thrive in. 

Once more, the merchant that does not worship God, 
like the undevout astronomer, is mad ; for how can he 
fail to own a preordaining in his sphere as well as in the 
orbit of the earth or any circuit of the skies ? Is it by 
chance that these great cities stand on the Hudson and 
Mersey and Seine and Thames, and that they are fed 
from fertile countries with corn and wheat and whatever 
the ground can produce ? Are not the paths of steam- 
ships and the iron tracks of cars prescribed bj' providen- 
tial power no less than the river-courses and the tides ? 
The atheistic lecturer declares he sees no agent but 

15 



226 PRINCIPLES. 

man. Has the human creature done all on the globe? 
No more than he made the planet itself. The streams 
flow from mountain-chains, and the currents of events 
and affairs have their springs in other heights of a su- 
perhuman wisdom. We see it in the curious suiting of 
climate to culture and of material to manufacture, of the 
wood and quarry to become both pavement and house, 
of the mine to be transformed into the mint, and in all 
the flj'ing of supply to want as to a magnet. Man has 
done this no more than he has thrown up the Alle- 
ghanies for a continent's backbone, or scooped the Gulf, 
and shaped the Golden Gate for ports. A ledger should 
be a good liturgy read aright, and a bank-book correctly 
kept is a collect for the day. From accounts settled 
now the final one gets its name ; and the temple so 
long miscalled for Mammon belongs to God. Already 
some church vestries are less sacred than some counting- 
rooms. To pick a priest for myself I should not seek 
the Confessional more readily than the Exchange. 
Church and clergy must learn to appreciate this great 
outside communion of uprightness and honor, whose 
members maj^ not be dependent on clerical ministra- 
tions or punctual at dedicated shrines, but whose hearts 
have been cleansed b}" tests more searching than a 
watery baptism, and nourished and stimulated through 
a broad intercourse with humanity and b}' a better than 
sacramental bread and wine. Surely from an unseen 
spirit-world must come the motive b}- which earthly 
dealings can be so raised. But not in a wood or mar- 
ble sanctuary alone is the door b}' which the impulse 
comes or window through which the truth shines ; and 
many a religious minister will own the incentives de- 



BUSINESS. 227 

rived to his own fidelit}' from the conduct of not a few 
of those whom he was sent to save. Merchant-princes 
may be also merchant-priests, if they have, too, an affec- 
tion for their home which will never postpone it to the 
saloon or club-room, make it an appendage to the wharf 
or office, or permit it to degenerate into a lodging-house 
or inn, when it should be the altar for all the prosperity 
from the toiling hand and sweating brow. Piet}' toward 
heaven will tend the domestic shrine. As the sun gravi- 
tates to the planets it draws, so God bends toward us 
while we lean on him. 

The Persian proverb saj^s, the hnjer should be left 
ignorant of nothing about the article which the seller 
knows. But trade is a training for both parties of wit 
as well as honor. The da}' cannot be spent in explana- 
tions, but the bargain made ; and while si}' concealment is 
fraud, judges alone should be purchasers, and fools sent 
to shops will make mistakes. "Look out!" say the 
EngHsh, and " Take care ! " say the French drivers, as 
they meet and pass on the highway. In affairs or affec- 
tions we must have our hands steady and our eyes open 
and clear. No bounty in this world is allotted to the 
blind. But let the kindness match the keenness of the 
glance. 



228 PRINCIPLES. 



IX. 

BEASTS. 

THAT all life is connected, and species no absolute 
distinction, only a convenient term, there is both 
physical and metaph3'sical proof; but no evidence that 
ascent more than descent is its law. By no line of de- 
marcation can man and beast be cut apart ; and our sym- 
pathy, inextinguishable for what is below us, — for the 
cattle on the hills, the domestic dog and cat, the hen 
and her brood, the wild tenants of the desert and wood, 
quadrupeds that excel us in strength or swiftness, and 
birds that mock us with their superior flight, — is a virtue 
less of volition than in our blood, and like the natural 
affection for kith and kin. By what resemblances of 
persons, not alone with each other, but with the horse, 
tiger, or fox, we are struck, the relations being in tem- 
per as well as looks ! Any boundary, clear through, in 
vain we try to fix. The beasts have no language, we 
say, meaning our arbitrary signs ; for the crows, rooks, 
and bees not only have natural language with each other, 
but understand ours in part. The}" have some apprehen- 
sion of words. I was told of a dog who knew not what 
" bone" was in English, but instantly understood it in 
French. Most dogs will come from out of sight at the 
call of .their name. The communication with each 
other of the ravens and the ants, of the wedged flock 



BEASTS. 229 

of wild geese, of emigrant swallows, or of the bobolinks 
is too- close for us to discern, and only bj^our ignorance 
is it disesteemed. Shall we part ourselves, by our 
affections, from the beasts ? A learned work of a P'rench 
naturalist has just been tracing human love to its origin 
in the least and lowest tribes ; and the analogies are so 
curious and minute that our finer seems to open from 
their coarser sensibilit}^, as the flower is but a blossoming 
stem of grass, the skull a transformed vertebra, and the 
fruit a metamorphosed leaf. 

Driven from structural claims to exclusiveness, our 
pride takes its stand at last on ideas, of which it ssijs the 
beasts have none, as they cannot contemplate nature or 
turn a reflective eye on themselves, however they may 
be possessed of certain notions or views. A cow seems 
to have no aspirations ; content with chewing her cud, 
she surveys the universe with what a blank gaze ! But 
notice a 3'oung girl reading a page of some book she has 
taken from the library. The clock ticks hard b}", but 
with one swing of the pendulum in a hundred glances 
of her eye, b}' motions inconceivabl}' rapid, scorning all 
count, she gathers up the sense of how man}- letters, sylla- 
bles, and words ! Is matter directing matter in the veloc- 
ity of that transparent visual ball ? Is mud refined both 
perceiver and perceived ? Is it a far-off cousin of the mon- 
key that at last reads and spells ? I look off from some 
headland, and see the sun set not only in the sky but on 
a thousand points of rock along the ocean-shore, while 
the reverberating surge that shakes the range of cliff on 
the offing is comminuted into babbling ripples at that 
elbow of sea and ba}^ and creek whence m}' observa- 
vation is made. But who shall anal3'ze or describe the 



230 PRINCIPLES. 

sensation that rolls in upon me with the diminishing 
swell of the wave ? I only know that the billow, doing 
what no philosoph}^ can, sweeps awa}^ my doubt. Infi- 
delity is impossible in the mood to which I am raised. 
In the ecstasy of mj^ joy no God is too great to believe 
in and no heaven is too high for mj^ hope. If the Maker 
walked in Eden of old, it was no better paradise than 
mine ; and I sa,}" to all the godless as Bonaparte on board 
ship, pointing to the stars, said to the ingenious atheists 
deriding superstition at his side, "Gentlemen, who made 
all that ? " Do such emotions visit any animal's brain ? 
Is there any thread between these processes of my mind 
and those of the highest beast, or is every one of my ideas 
for it a missing link? We can, for answer, but commend 
to both the evolutionists and the special creationists the 
old doctrine that the persons must neither be confounded 
nor the substance divided, as reaching far bej'ond the 
trinity to the manifold sum of being, of which we and all 
that lives are a part so essential that without every 
thing beside nothing could exist, but the loosening of 
an atom would ruin the whole. 

Beyond thought prayer is prescribed as the highest 
exercise of our nature. But some of the animals are 
reverent, as, long before "Vestiges of Creation" ap- 
peared, Lord Bacon noted that man is the dog's god. 
Is it but blank wonder, no adoration, he feels ? Our life 
is wonder no less, and he who goes deepest is aston- 
ished most at the world he is in and at himself. I 
gazed from the top of one in a colony of vast boulders 
that in some past geologic age had arrived in ships of 
ice tossed by wave and torrent from the hills. The 
vessels, melting in milder airs, discharged their enormous 



BEASTS. 231 

freight of stone, and forests grew up, girdling their vari- 
ous bulk. On the disintegrating top of one huge mass, 
weighing thousands of tons and bedded deep in the 
earth, several fir-trees rose into the sky. Underneath 
another, lifted from the bare ledge where it had paused 
in the old drift b}- a smaller fragment of triangular 
shape, I could trace plainly the scratches, showing 
that it was from the northwest this tremendous fleet 
had left its mountain-port for a still harbor to stay in, 
who can tell for how manj' years ? Miles awa}' shone 
the ocean, retreating from its former domain. The birds, 
those little optimists, responded to each other with their 
songs ; the sparrow and thrush, to shame all the pes- 
simists in the world, flew above the splintered peaks 
among the waving boughs, that murmured in the solemn 
choir to their manifold chant ; while the caw of the crow 
spoke of solitude and the lapse of time, his voice seem- 
ing that of chanticleer on the minor key. With all that 
science could explain or my faculties comprehend, blind 
amazement, more conscious and profound than that of 
an}' beast, was the sentiment in which I was lost. How 
immense appeared the unseen Worker's plan ! With 
what care these huge piles had been lowered or raised ! 
How big the planet looks when from any height we get 
the least imagination of its spread and curve ! Yet it is 
but one of the least of the shot fired into the firmament, 
so full of those blazing cannon-balls of suns and fixed 
stars. I stand and marvel at the presumption of any 
man's attempt to solve the thing I contemplate, in his 
scheme. I am the beast's brother in my surprise ; and 
the steed I drive is no more startled at his first sight 
and sound of a locomotive, bicj'cle, military procession, 



232 PRINCIPLES. 

or billow breaking on the beach, than am I at each suc- 
cessive scene of the creative acts in God's unfinished 
pla3^ The village church 3'onder, whose spire I see 
through the trees, rests on a bit of the ledge sloping 
down from my post of vantage, and the preacher within 
its walls can guide me so little in my quest he might 
better be dumb. Like the lower creatures, who do not 
pretend to fathom the problem or be masters of the 
situation, let me too be mute. 

Philosophy at its last intrenchment would put the 
difference betwixt man and beast in the inability of the 
latter to classify itself in the universe. If it could say 
I am an ox, an insect, or a pig, it would be such no 
longer, but a man ! Is it not, however, venturesome 
to say there is in no animal a dim personal sense? 
Some philosophers regard self-consciousness as an infe- 
rior state of the human mind, the ego as a fleeting 
phenomenon predicable neither of God nor of the per- 
fectly unfolded man. Not adopting their speculation, I 
yet note in animals some degree of the self-conscious 
mood. I am as sure of my horse as I am of any inde- 
pendent member of my household, that he will do this 
and will not do that, will balk at an over-heavy load, as 
the llama and camel refuse to rise when the burden is too 
great, and will stop at the foot of a steep hill whose 
difficulty his eye takes in. He knows the way back 
over the road better than I do, and chooses the right 
turn when m^* ignorance makes me slacken the rein. 
He so well remembers and is so gratefal for my consid- 
eration and kind attention that he will kiss me and lick 
my hand when he feels affectionate, will neigh at my 
approach when he is indifferent to another person, and 



BEASTS. 233 

will not suffer himself to be handled b}^ an ostler that 
does not treat him well. He learns courage from expe- 
rience, and scorn of dangers or ugl}^ objects which he 
once feared, as we acquire like knowledge. He looks 
as earnest^ at me as does any companion. In short, 
he aspires to be the man who in the great evolution 
came with him from a common root. If he do not say 
" I," as with self-complacenc}' and so much vainglory- I 
do, he thinks it all the same, atoning for the less vividness 
bj' the greater modesty of the self-assertion he makes. 

But, ssijs the theologian, will you make the beasts that 
perish immortal, to encroach on our privilege and gain- 
sa}^ a canonical book ? If it be difficult to conceive how 
an}' beast should be immortal, the wa}- of such a fact is 
equally hard to imagine for the man, so much of what 
be now calls himself must be changed and dropped, left 
in dust behind while he draws his real self out of his 
present case and environment, in which it is so smothered 
and choked. B3' inward unfolding we become conscious 
how much of ourselves we could spare and 3^et our spirit 
or essence not be lost. How then can we justify our 
hasty conclusion, excluding aught that can escape from 
other animal frames than our own ? How can we fail to 
observe it in the soaring lark, the fish leaping out of water, 
the thoroughbred race-horse erecting his head like a man, 
the e^^e of a hound seeking his master's, the giraffe's 
beautiful neck lengthened, — some naturalists have said 
in its efforts to crop fruit on the branches at first be3'ond 
its reach, and however taking ages to perfect its form, 
sigmf3'ing an upreaching relish for nobler food? Im- 
mortalit3' has its seed not in an}" outward revelation 
or bodil3' resurrection, but in the sense of limits be- 



23-i PfiiNCiPLES. 

yond which we yearn to expand. Is there no such 
longing in natures lower than our own ? We have heard 
of a horse swelling in every vein and trembling in 
every limb when first put into harness, as a wild African 
resents subjection to slaver3^ Doubtless many a^ crea- 
ture feels that we deprive it of hberty. There must be 
a heaven for the soul to mount in because the soul is a 
mounting thing ; and out of that heaven b}^ the sky itself 
we seem to be shut. The firmament is a cattle-pound, 
the starry orbits do not give us scope, the Milky Waj' is 
a veil we want to tear off, and all the elements are a mob 
pursuing us for our life. Like a racer scorning the ground 
with his heels, we spurn the earthly confinements that 
would cramp us and would make the planets the floor 
of our abode. We find that the fixed stars, those un- 
counted larger suns, are some of them variable, and wax 
in splendor and pour out increasing heat, as if to enjoin 
elevation and growing ardor upon us. But the scale of 
ascension being so immense, who shall say that the sera- 
phim are not as many courses above us as we above the 
reptile and the worm ? 

But no such rising through the chain of being by a law, 
and no endless personal continuance or everlasting in- 
dividuality, but the moral sense prompting to right as 
such for its own dignity and charm, is our nature's cli- 
max ; and can we pretend there is any conscience in the 
beast? Undoubtedly there are manifest rudiments of 
it in many a case. No man ever shows more evident 
mortification and shame than does a setter or colly who 
has signally failed of his dut}^ with the game or the 
flock. No man is more cast down than a mastiff" under 
reproach. Who is more lowly than the coach-dog or 



BEASTS. 235 

spaniel when ordered on occasion not to attend j'ou on 
3'our walk or drive, but to go home, and understanding 
so well what is meant b}' 3'our look or word or pointed 
whip ? 

Will it be said, in fine, that not simple moral feeling, 
but disinterestedness or self-sacrifice marks the great 
gulf which no animal can pass over to reach the man? 
The cow and goat, so patientl}^ yielding to us their milk, 
and complaining but for a moment when the offspring 
it was meant for is taken to the butclier's knife ; the 
bees, trained to make honey for their keeper, and light- 
ing in harmless swarms upon him as if they had not a 
sting in all their throng ; and the Newfoundland or St. 
Bernard breed of dogs, saving the life of the traveller 
cast in the snow or drowning in the flood, — shame one 
half of the selfish humanit}' to which we belong. It is 
hard to love a sharper, swindler, or seducer because he 
belongs to our race and has an upright form, as we do 
the dumb, faithful, S3'mpathetic partner of our jo^'s and 
woes, who does not covet our wealth, or corrupt our 
virtue, or env}" our luxuries, or plot against our life. 

Certainl}' there is a spiritual sublimit}' in some men 
to which no creature ever appears to attain, it being 
God manifest in the human breast. A man who never 
shuts his own eye before the most formidable testimony, 
nor lets another see for him ; a man who thinks for him- 
self, and endangers all other men in their low customs, 
their institutions, or their ease ; a man with might 
enough to supplant one religion for a better, and substi- 
tute worship in place of superstition, as Jesus disestab- 
lished Judaism ; a man like John Brown, single-handed, 
assailing slavery behind its milhon bayonets and more 



236 PRINCIPLES. 

than million whips, feeling that his soul is more than a 
match for it, as David trusted his sling against Goliath's 
weaver's beam ; a man who does not reckon weapons or 
material of war when convinced of the justice of his 
cause, for which he is alike willing to live or to die, and 
knows that by all the m3'rmidons of bad usages it can 
never be slain, — is an animal of a peculiar sort, whose 
graduation out of the trilobite has not been demonstrated, 
but whose ph3^sical beginning at the meanest base of 
organic life cannot be disproved. Who shall tell by 
how many and fine steps in its long journey life rises 
from the ground to the pinnacle of the temple which 
God builds ? 

But from the nature and destinj?^ of the animal let us 
go to its use. First, it makes a picture of the world, 
which else were but architecture, a rotunda with stained 
walls instead of the animated and moving scene we be- 
hold. In what a desert of land and sea and sky, with- 
out these creatures, we should live ! But the earth is 
made sociable by their diverse kinds almost as much 
as by our own. In temples their manifold figures are 
carved, and by their forms many a canvas is lighted 
up. It is because they are so essential or substantial in 
nature that we cannot spare them in art. Should they 
all suddenly disappear, how lonel}^ and forlorn we should 
be, with such companions and auxiliaries lost, that daily 
draw our observation and give our imagination delight ! 
We are enchanted not only by the largest of them, but 
by the least. The pismire building ever anew its P3Ta- 
mids, older than those in Eg3^pt, and dragging the grains 
of sand, its blocks, as a tug tows vessels on the stream ; 
the bee buzzing, with a voice which is the last echo of the 



BEASTS. 237 

lowing in the pasture, as it tacks from flower to flower, 
passing at once if it find but little hone}', and hovering 
and thrusting deep its little spoon if there be much, 
and on occasion slitting at the bottom the bag of nec- 
tar that could not otherwise be reached, shaming the 
human skill that might well be defied to gather from 
such minute jars the perfect sweet ; the chamois, a liv- 
ing snow-flake and moving spot of beauty on some 
alpine crag ; the snake, charming us, if it do not the 
birds, with the spiral slide that takes us across all the 
tramplings of the globe to the garden of Eden, and 
makes the convoluted line, which no arithmetic can re- 
duce, the type of eternit}^ ; the dog, partner, aid, and 
solace to Indian and white man, savage and civilized, to 
the ends of the earth, and lavishing on his master per- 
haps tlie best and only constant love, defending his 
property, obej'ing his orders, and guarding his door ; 
the cat, with its clean and dainty habit and contented 
purr, a consolation in the house, presenting the kittens, 
whose play with their own tails is the endless amuse- 
ment of ever}" child, while sometimes this fehne dimin- 
uendo of the tiger is a lab^'rinth of beaut}' in the marks 
on its skin, and alwaj's the impersonation of grace in 
its gait, to stir the envy of any actor on the stage ; all 
the herds on the hills, and flocks in the meadows or the 
folds, with calves and foals and lambs ; the barnj^ard 
fowl, with chickens and ducklings and goslings, which 
the baby, feeling their soft resemblance to itself, wants 
to catch ; the sow, with her satisfied sleep}' grunt, as 
her snowy litter are stretched by her side, creep over 
her back, or suck at her teats, — what a canvas ! Into 
the wilder specimens, of squirrel and rabbit and mole 



238 PRINCIPLES. 

and woodchuck and mink, the domestic varieties shade 
awa}^ and from African wastes and Indian jungles 
and Asiatic or Alaskan seas the lion and sea-lion, 
elephant and sea-horse, zebra and ape, and a hundred 
sorts beside, must be brought in countless caravans 
through the world for young and old to visit, cosset, and 
admire. 

Without the panorama of beasts what should we do ? 
How desolate our dwelling and impoverished our fancy 
would become ! Were they instantly extinct, how 
empt}^ our premises and dismal our walks ! The zo- 
ological is as needful as any other garden ; and, pre- 
served in death, the creatures make the best part of 
every museum and conservatory. It is not strange 
Agassiz thought the animal kingdom indispensable in 
heaven, it could be so ill spared on earth. Were it ex- 
terminated, we should long and pine for its meanest and 
most annoying specimens, could we have no other por- 
tions of it back. We should be sorr}' we had driven out 
the wolf and catamount and bear ! It would please us 
to hear the wasp warn us with his microscopic bassoon, 
and the mosquito wind his little horn, and the serpent 
hiss from its fangs, and the grasshopper light on our 
gown or sleeve, and the locust voice, on his trumpet, 
the sultry heat. 

Wh}^ do we so hold to the beasts, and what is the 
reason of their spell ? They are our relations ! It is the 
tie of blood we feel, — a kindred which, if science did 
not establish, we could not disown. There is, moreover, 
a moral interest. The beast is the mirror of the man. 
In its features, as in a glass, he sees his face. His 
own qualities, magnified or reduced, return to him from 



BEASTS. 239 

these inferior shapes ; and if so represented that they run 
into extremes, jet he is instructed and pleased, as con- 
vex and concave reflectors, even by exaggeration or con- 
traction, give us a lesson on the proportions of the face. 
How blind and stupid must man be not to discover in 
himself the fox, wolf, viper, bear, as Herod was Rey- 
nard to Jesus, and the Pharisees were full of slyness and 
venom, while both the innocent lamb and the lordl}* lion 
of Judah were emblems of the Christ ! How easil}" we 
distribute the lineaments of our acquaintances among 
the four-footed tribes ! "You have made your sitter,'* 
one said to the artist, " look like a fox." " That is what 
he is," the painter replied. Surely no creature creeping, 
as wdth pain, from one green limb to another in the 
thicket, to pause and devour its pre}', is more truty the 
sloth than is many a man, while no claws in the pan- 
ther are sharper than some women's to scratch. I have 
known a whole town to be no better than a dog in the 
manger, not enjoying, nor allowing the ox to enjo}', the 
hay. It said to its citizens, " We will not use a certain 
territory for one purpose, and you shall not use it for 
another. It shall be neither road nor landscape, nei- 
ther field nor pond." From the gravel-heap in the 3'ard 
my older cow regularly hooked her 3'ounger sister down. 
What is the pulpit but just such a gravel-heap to the 
occupant who would confine it to the amount of ortho- 
doxy harvested by his sect or concrete in his brain? 

We should thank the beasts for their rhetorical contri- 
butions to strengthen and enrich our vernacular tongue. 
Said Burke, in the famous trial of Hastings, " We did 
not say he was a lion or tiger ; w^e said he was a weasel 
and a fox." The English orator wished to confine the 



240 PRINCIPLES. 

culprit for characterization to the baser and deny to 
him the grander properties of the inferior tribes. It is 
a poor style of writing or of speech in which meadows 
do not bloom, and wings fly over, and feet career. It 
is what we call abstract, that is, dead. The livelier man- 
ner of expression will remind hearer or reader of all 
that stirs and breathes. 

In the picture-gallery what a masterpiece every 
creature may become ; and what a clod would be 
the globe, what a blank the air, and what a drench the 
sea, but for what lives and plaj'S, cleaves and glides, 
burrows and mines, paddles and oars its way ! Birds 
were the first navigators, and insects the original au- 
gers. There were nests in banks before men dug with 
spades, and half our implements are copies of living 
tools that wrought before 

** Adam delved or Eva span." 

Let us consider the lessons the animals give. We 
are told that civilization has its measure in our distance 
from the beast, as the forehead advances and the jaw 
retreats. But the high facial angle covers much con- 
trivance of sin. " Work the beast out of j^our compo- 
sition," the moralist enjoins. Softly, and not so fast ! 
Much soul of goodness is in these humble forms, would 
we " observingl}^ distil it out." How temperate and 
pure nature is in the unpampered brute, that needs take 
from no Father Mathew the pledge ! The swaUow 
cleaning its bill on the bough, the plover washing in 
the seaside pool, the duck preening its feathers and 
shaking the cleansing drops from its sides, the cow 
licking its mate in the pasture or the calf in the stall, the 



BEASTS. 241 

gull and eagle loving the ventilation through every pin- 
ion and organ in their loft}' flight, make suggestions to 
those ignorant of the bath, clad untidilj', lounging on 
sofas, or stifling in dens. In some respects it were 
worse for them to be men than for us to be brutes ! 

" He calls it reason, lience his power's increased 
To be far beastlier than any beast," 

sa3's Mephistopheles of the man. To work like a 
beaver, or be busy as a bee, is the praise of but 
part of our species ! The spider was the first weaver, 
before the knittiiig-needle was invented, the spinning- 
wheel hummed, or shuttles were driven by steam ; and 
man inherited or imitated the constructiveness some of 
whose operations in his far-away cousins still challenge 
his own skill. The unfledged chick in his white round 
tower is in prison. But he secretes a mallet in his bill, 
and, knocking to find the weakest part of his stony 
shell, he breaks jail, makes his wa}' out, and soon drops 
the no longer useful tool, which, like a diamond glass- 
cutter, he had applied. Was the first performance of 
that little feat the origin of all the blasting and tun- 
nelling and bridge-building that have altered the face of 
the world ? How was that faculty in immemorial C3'cles 
accumulated which is knowledge to-da}" in a solid form ? 
To Ivnow how to do a thing is more than a speculation 
how it has been or should be done ; and by this rule 
how superior to much of our science is the knowledge 
of beasts ! The Texas ant lays out its garden beds, 
plants the seed, and gathers the crop ; and if some 
shower drives through its sandy roof to wet the precious 
store, takes it out to dry in the sun, that it may not 

16 



242 PRINCIPLES. 

rot and spoil. This is good agriculture, and a fine ex- 
ample to all cultivators and husbandmen ; and I cannot 
help the fancy that the progenitors of the little creature 
had among them some daring Columbus who first dis- 
covered the arable properties of the soil, and that in all 
our harvesting in field or prairie we follow in his wake ! 
We talk proudly of our brains. O phrenologist, in this 
vivacious proletary of the ant, all skin and legs, show me 
the lobes that account for his works and wars, and of 
that sj'stem of bondage which I cannot extol him for 
setting as an example before us ! Not all mimicry and 
mockery of a blind instinct, as we -call it, is this indus- 
try, but rather the beginning whose rare strokes we 
pursue. The animals are ethical teachers, to whom 
many a man might go to school. "Let dogs delight 
to bark and bite ; " but, O Isaac Watts, in how much 
else they delight far more, — in watchfulness, loyalty, 
grateful attachment, faithful service, and in guarding 
for their owner the provisions for lack of which they 
starve, till their self-denial is our envy and despair ! 
Cats, it is said, love not persons, but places. Would 
that some men loved home, rather than the saloon or 
club-room, as much ! If there be night-walkers among 
the feline tribes, it is not apparent why we should fol- 
low the poorest patterns in lower races any more than 
in our own. With what patience, too, the beasts suflTer ! 
My horse whinnies to salute his comrade coming home ; 
but, when wounded and bleeding, makes not a whimper 
or moan. Not having our language, he may think it of 
no use to complain. If that be an intellectual defect, it 
is also a moral advantage which our dumb fellows have. 
I note in some animals a natural piety, too. The house- 



BEASTS. 243 

dog's deferential look, dropping of his tail, curling of 
his bod}', is his sincere liturg}', never repeated mechan- 
ically and without sense. My friend, after long absence 
abroad, forgot his dog ; but the dog remembered him, 
and ran on the other side of the way, as his old master 
went from the city to his country-home, and waited for 
leave to come across, — a politeness far beneath which 
how much of our human courtesy falls, in the street or 
the car ! We might even learn to be thankful from the 
beasts. Dr. Warwick in England relates that a pike in 
a pond having bruised its head against a tenter-hook in a 
post, he treated it surgically', and healed the wound ; and 
after that the fish would fondly follow him up and down 
in all its movements, and feed from his hands, although 
to other persons it continued shy. A traveller whose 
dog resisted his starting one morning on his journey by 
persistent barking at his horse*s head, feared the dog 
was mad, and shot at and wounded it ; but on going back, 
found it bleeding and dying by a bag of treasure he had 
carelessly left under a tree where he stopped over night. 
The beast's virtue is nature's irony on our vice. There 
is no end to the learning animals furnish, to the stints 
they set, and to the benefits they impart. The}- are our 
purve3'ors and commissariat. They provide food, cloth- 
ing, and decoration. How we ransack nature for their 
spoils for our board and our back ! I have seen a green 
beetle in a lad^^'s ear-ring. Would the lady have crushed 
the Uve beetle as worthless and having no rights to her 
respect? The hat, cloak, shoe, shirt, hair-settee, house- 
rug, door-mat, or feathered oruament in some bonnet or 
cap, has cost a creature's life. How much the horse has 
done for humanity, for our delight or profit in riding 



244 PRINCIPLES. 

and driving, hauling of merchandise and material, and 
bearing swiftl}^ the message and messenger of life and 
death ! Are whip and spar, an overload and lathered 
sides, the return and requital? With all our ships and 
railways, how could we get along without him? Dur- 
ing the horse-disease, when every stable was a hospital, 
and no carriage could be got, we learned what the horse 
usually does for us even in the burial of the dead, as 
he draws the living procession and the clay in the 
hearse. As a young woman reproached a gentleman 
who took her in his chaise for going slow, he replied, 
"You must go then with somebody else, as I use no 
whip ! " Mounting a hill, we involuntar}^ stoop to get 
a purchase on our muscles, and ease the ascent. Un- 
check your horse in the same situation ; he too has a 
back ! 

Our duty to the beasts is the last point. They are 
part of the scale of being ; we are on its upper rounds. 
As their organism and ours are on the same plan, so they 
have hints and rudiments of our faculties and feelings. 
In their so-called blind instincts they are argus-eyed, 
and in some of their manipulations they have Briareus- 
hands, for calculation, construction, engineering, div- 
ing, and soaring, for hypsethral and submarine work. 
They have love, memor}', regret, repentance, grief, of 
which, after his long watch at the sick-bed, the dog 
will sometimes go to die on the grave, which I am not 
sorry to see his marble image sometimes surmount. Our 
selfish fickleness and inconstancy is by how few of them 
and how seldom shown ! Some men and women may be 
infatuated with a pet creature to the neglect of more 
important ties. But the beast's fate is rather apt to be 



BEASTS. 245 

in a cruel handling or supercilious scorn. If, however, 
we be vain, unkind, sl}^, treacherous, malign, some of 
the animals laj' us under obligation as respects philoso- 
phy, in affording us names, — the vulture, coon, wild- 
cat, or wolf, the headstrong bison, and, in his sudden 
spring, the crafty bear. The ruminating animals in- 
culcate reflection, and the grazing ones content, as all 
daj'' long the}^ browse in the pasture and drink only 
from the brook b}' the way. I have heard poorer 
preachers of comfort than the thrush, song- sparrow, 
and bobolink ; and for all his depredations we have 
never paid the robin in cherries yet. Rather than have 
the crow exterminated, he shall have part of my corn. 
I should miss his raven suit, his intonation of distance 
and solitude, and his nois}^ consultation with his peers, 
if he is part of the flock or when he is appointed sen- 
tinel on the pine-tree. 

For all the advantage we get out of it, with what 
slaughter we repa^^ the animal world ! English travel- 
lers have gone to the wild unappropriated territories of 
the earth with the most improved fire-arms to slay at 
pleasure the game in every close jungle or lonely reach 
of waste land, creek or bayou, — the eagle and crocodile 
for sport ; the lion, raccoon, leopard, tiger, seal, otter, 
fox, mink, and sable for their skins ; the elephant for 
his ivory tusks ; and how man}' a creature for pure 
wantonness, to see if their fowling-piece would carry so 
far, and that the}' may boast of the shot ! The African 
traveller, Cummings, relates that his ball hit the centre 
of an elephant's forehead, and pierced the skull. Out 
of the smooth hole oozed the ruddy gore. The crea- 
tui^e lifted its trunk slowly, and touched significantly 



246 PRINCIPLES. 

the spot whence its life ebbed away, and then swayed 
its bod}^ to and fro, with an Oriental salaam or sign of 
worship, and then, as at a tick of the watch, fell dead 
in its tracks. Were I Mr. Cummings, I should not like 
to meet that elephant at the judgment ! Against the 
butcher's or fisherman's business I have nothing to sa}^, 
although eating our fellow-creatures savors of cannibal- 
ism since we have discovered the relationship ! But 
shooting or fishing for sport and pastime is barbarism, 
practised b}^ whatever fine lady in a silk dress, while 
no spectacle is more revolting than a lout of a boy, for 
whom his parents have nothing better to do than spend 
his day hunting some little beach bird from bay to 
headland with his long and murderous gun. What 
have the poor creatures done to be so mocked and 
without mercy assailed? All animal nature is selfish, 
we are told. But, in order to selfishness, we must have 
a conscience for comparison, as the ideal term, of 
which the gross animal nature, however possessed as 
a rudiment, is relatively devoid. The selfish creature 
is man ! Are the hen and the walrus selfish when de- 
fending their off'spring against the hawk and the hunter's 
spear, to which the}^ courageousl}' expose themselves ? 

I am no doubter about the heavens and all their 
measureless life and jo}' . But, as was said of Socrates, 
that he brought philosoph}^ down from heaven to earth, 
the same office needs to be done for religion ; and the 
most neglected part of religion concerns our duty to 
the too little regarded creatures left so entirel}^ at our 
mercy. The sharpest test of our character is in our 
treatment of what is in our power, and whollj' below us. 
Our equals can defend themselves, and give and take 



BEASTS. 247 

as good or bad as they send or get, while there is no 
earthlj^ remed}' if we refuse or withhold our dut}- — that 
is, what is due — to the mute and helpless life beneath. 
Yet it is a law, curious and sublime, of our nature for 
all that is high to suppl}' and comfort all that is low. 
The weakest thing in the house, the babe, is the 
strongest. Its cradle, like the sun, is the blazing cen- 
tre around which all else revolves. How the mother 
hovers over the child that is lame or deformed ! 
Jesus was God's Son, not by chronological primogeni- 
ture, b}^ origin before Abraham or the foundation of 
the world, but b}^ preaching to spirits, descending into 
hell, seeking and saving the lost. While the calf, foal, 
kitten, or callow bird remains 3'oung, helpless, and un- 
able to satisfy its own hunger, how the parent tends, 
but when it is strong pushes it off to shift for itself! 
A certain tenderness to what is a grade under or a step 
behind is the touchstone of character, and the dispo- 
sition to thrust it back is the generation of the De\41. 
Sympathy is the grace all-comprehending. The sen- 
sitive plant exists to show that flowers have feeling. 
When I see some 3'oung Ninirod cutting with his whip 
at the poppy-heads, which signified the aristocrats to a 
certain emperor of Rome, or a girl tearing a rose or a 
pink to pieces in her petulant pride, or a gardener at 
his trade impaling the just-opened buds with wires, I 
think the}' are hurting live parts of the world. Youth- 
ful rudeness will be cruelty when it is ripe ! The mal- 
treated animals, who must call us to a reckoning at some 
future bar, already have some atonement or revenge. 
Whence but from our abusing them is this thirst for 
brothers' blood which a thousand wars have not slaked ? 



248 PRINCIPLES. 

Had we treated them better, we should have spared 
each other more. Pity for the feeble and unfortunate 
be our motto henceforth ! It is no task for base men to 
duck and defer to their superiors, to kings and magis- 
trates, to officials clothed with power, or to those whose 
wit, genius, and beauty win eminence and applause. 
AVhat is all this materialization in the circles but a sk}^- 
larking after angels, whose shoulders we clap birds' 
wings to, in sign that they soar, while we are sur- 
rounded by substantial shapes of being whose welfare 
is in our hands? Wherefore is the celestial curtain 
held so tightly but to notify us that our business is on 
this side? Too long the host has been divided. Let 
us halt, and bring up the rear ! On our line of march 
we have halted for the slave, we are halting for the 
woman, and shall halt for the beast. At last he has 
his apostles and missionaries and protective societies 
and legal defences, beginning with the Hebrew statute, 
not to " muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." 
None can do it if he has the kindly heart that takes 
pleasure in feeding the animals and, like chiklren at the 
menagerie, in seeing them fed. Is their fondness for the 
creatures, caterpillars, and bugs the haunting memory 
of a pre-existent state ; and in all our so often happy 
intercourse with the beasts do we revert to the ancient 
womb of our birth? Weary with fashion and ambition, 
of arts and plots, we find that the beasts are good 
society ! As Walt Whitman sa3's, " They do not make 
us sick with pretences, apologies, obsequious prece- 
dents, and pious airs ; nor have they any follies of 
avaricious possession, respect for persons, or artificial 
rank." M}^ neighbor's black and white setter is treated 



BEASTS. 249 

on equal terras b}' m}' 3'ellow cur, who has no notion of 
inferior rights. What charming simplicit}^ and sobriety 
are in the quadrupeds that we do not intoxicate or cor- 
rupt ! Daniel Webster, coming from wrangling debates 
at the Capitol, finds his cattle are better company than 
the Senate, and wants them driven up to his door be- 
fore he dies. AYilliam Blake, the- English painter, who 
satirized the ill-tempered gentleman by painting him 
as an enormous flea, would say also of himself, — 

" Am not I a little fly, 
If I live or if I die 1 " 

Does the fly-catching plant hint the retributions that 
lurk below, as well as stoop from above, for such as get 
b}' robber}' their support? Justice and generosity to 
beasts will win their trust, and bring on that millen- 
nium, in which their first impulse will not be to run and 
fly and hide in the wall, creep into the hole, or scuttle 
awa}^ in the water. The keeper of the caravan has 
affectionate relations with the anaconda, and puts his 
head in the lion's mouth ; and when the elephant to the 
sound of music walks so tenderl}" over his prostrate 
frame, everj'body weeps. See the expert or natural 
charmers to whom the four-footed tribes flock and the 
birds fl}' in clouds around their heads ! Snakes in the 
East, at the sound of their master's flute, uncoil from 
their wicker cages, and come out to dance while the tune 
lasts, and then, like the graceful couples in a ball-room, 
glide obediently back each to its own place. How 
long shall we wait for the secret of the charm wliich 
shall turn to harmou}" the whole of life ? At least until 
we put consideration instead of tyranny for our behav- 



250 PRINCIPLES. 

ior to these humble pensioners, to whom, as well as to 
any other members of mankind, a just reckoning must 
come. Thus far the saints have been too much bent on 
reaching heaven to manifest themselves as sons of God 
on earth. Let the revivalist learn that the way of sal- 
vation is no scheme or form, no temple-gate or closet- 
door, but goodness and equity to all by whom with us the 
boon of existence is shared. We justify our own place 
on the immense scale of being, bj' blessing what is next 
to us. It is a revolving and an ascending scale, in 
which no creature is for ever confined to one spot, and 
all creatures are somehow together. The universe is 
not compartment, but communication. I believe in the 
cherubim, and would like to call at their dwelling, and 
sit awhile among their seats. But I do not wish ever to 
be shut up to angels alone. How tiresome to have only 
one sort of follt, however garnished with wings and 
harps and palms and crowns ! What the shape may 
be of the coming life, we cannot tell. The Bible gives 
us only fancies of what must be, — bej^ond our concep- 
tion, various and manifold ; the links of life not fewer, 
its points of progress not blocked, nor its earthly un- 
derpinnings torn away. How shall the mother behold 
the nursling whom death weaned from her breast? 
With what body shall our beloved come ? Shall there 
be no space under an}^ form for the creatures whose 
meekness when we strike accuses the irritable lords and 
ladies that go off like Chinese crackers and lioman can- 
dles, a word of insult being the spark of fire? 

" And now beside thee, bleeding lamb, 
I can lie down and sleep, 
Or think on Him who bore thy name, 
Graze after thee and weep." 



BEASTS. 251 

Such is the disposition to which in the fine hereafter the 
poet converts the Hon, the king of beasts-. Ma}' it be 
the mood to which all our roaring fierceness changes 
now! 

The beast is the alphabet of the man and the a h c 
for the child, who finds more pleasure and finer lessons 
in some pla3'ful pup than in its letters or its wooden 
painted doll, there being betwixt the two little creatures 
so much kin and common ground. What an astonishing 
likeness between the horses, that first nip each other 
in fun, and then bite in earnest, and the men whose 
jests gradually run into thrusts ; and how much worse 
and more blood}' the human behavior often is ! -^sop 
and Lafontaine have not run half the parallels on 
which animals are made to set us examples and ad- 
minister reproofs. 

Animals are man's memory of his birth and growth. 
All of them alive, as well as their fossil remains, are 
links in the development of his frame ; and without 
them there would be no recollection for the human race. 
When David says, God saw his substance, yet being 
imperfect, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of 
the earth, he anticipated Darwin. Inspired genius in 
a religious singer penetrated the secret of creation, as 
Shakspeare, better than any modern physiologist, has de- 
scribed the phenomenon of sleep-walking in Lady Mac- 
beth ; and in the King of Denmark's account as a ghost 
of his mortal poisoning, as in other passages, foreshad- 
ows what Harvey afterwards discovered of the circulation 
of the blood. Let us scorn or look down on nothing ; 
the universe is one stuff ! Pull a single thread, and the 
whole web and woof is stretched to the firmament and 



252 PRINCIPLES. 

outermost circumference of the stars, as it is to the 
innermost particle of the terrestrial globe. The mouse 
Burns apostrophizes, disturbed in its nest, quivers with 
a like nervous apprehension to the man whose dwelling 
an earthquake shakes or volcano overflows. In a drop 
of rain the insect finds its waterspout, and in the basin 
it is unawares launched on its Atlantic sea. Proud 
men at first wished to distinguish themselves as nobles, 
then for the whiteness of their skin, and now at last for 
their human form. But the biped may be a beast, and 
the quadruped an angel of consolation in unselfish 
love. 

We cannot shut out animal correspondence with 
man at any point. Is the suspicion of that power we 
call supernatural limited to us? A monkey, walking 
up to my friend's porch, and seeing there a small Mexi- 
can idol, knocked off its head with his hand. As he 
retired, the head was restored ; but the monke}^ return- 
ing was amazed and awe-struck, stretched out his hand 
repeatedly, and then drew it back in fear, not daring 
to touch again the marvellous image he survej^ed with 
as much respect as ever the old idol-worshipper had 
done. A tall horse, with a wilful temper and good 
sense, knows how to baffle the ostler-boy b}^ lifting his 
head above the head-stall, when to the ostler he will 
lower it at once ; and a stinging fly comprehends the 
advantages it gets from darkness or from 3'our hands* 
being too much engaged to strike. A two-months' 
pupp3^, having a number of friends in the family, will 
hesitate betwixt their diverse calls, and leap after a par- 
ticular voice or gesture when it has duly made up its 
mind. As a mocking-bird will imitate any songster it 



BEASTS. 253 

has heard, and the little child thought the parrot was 
the first teacher of the human speech it mimics, so 
what is the beast but a continuation, repetition, and 
long reverberation of man? 

A mark of some beasts, that appears largel}^ in the 
sagacious elephant as it turns its trunk into an arm 
to caress or an engine to squirt, and especiall}', too, in 
some species of the dog, is the individualizing power 
b}^ which the^^ mete out a rude justice to reward a friend 
or punish a foe. What human intelligence is keener 
than the canine to tell one person from another, and to 
distinguish between hostile demonstrations and a kind 
intent? Even the 3'oung and untrained creature with- 
draws his teeth and thrusts his smooth nose into your 
hand to show his biting was but pla}' ; and how his 
little heart pants to his owner with a grateful love 
which is discouraged by no check or blow ! Does this 
quick beat in his bosom accompan}^ feeling of a greater 
warmth? How can he discriminate, better than a b}^- 
stander, the intent in the finger 3'ou lift ! He is Fido 
the faithful, and what a useful guard and servant to 
fetch and carry he is ! The Scotch or Australian colly 
is a hand which the shepherd in the wilderness or on the 
hills could not tend his flock without. How he races 
after the stray sheep, seizing deserters by the thick 
wool, yet careful not to pierce the flesh, roping in the 
wanderers with his paw and his monitory bark ! He is 
the man extended, and as good for the commander of 
the fleecy host as for Napoleon was a sentinel or a scout. 
He is conscious of his importance and constant to his 
task, albeit with no stipulated pay. Who in danger 
of drowning or freezing would not have one of the 



254 PRINCIPLES. 

Alpine or Newfoundland breed in the neighborhood rather 
than an}' man ? Is the animal savior unaware what is 
meant b^' the danger or death from which he redeems ? 
" Beware of dogs," says Paul. " Beware of men," said 
a wiser than he ! The dog must defend us from the 
man that would break in, and has often been a better 
protection to a woman than a gun. Yet the custodian 
is how often unreasonabl}' slain ! 

Some persons have antipathies to particular beasts, 
such as the bug, mouse, worm, or snake, which they 
tliemselves are in some measure like. In natural consti- 
tution we are the creatures exalted and refined. As the 
gigantic fern softens at last into tlie moss which we call 
maiden's hair ; as the Saurian monster through natural 
variability has left not only his fossil in the rock, but 
his loins and living bones in some delicate quadruped ; as 
savages in a few generations of ofl'spring become saints, 
and piratical Northmen are converted into Englishmen, 
time being a missionary more efficacious than all the 
Board sends out, — so of what rude, remote beginnings 
is all living beaut}^ the amelioration ! Scarce could we 
conceive what it is to creep or swim or burrow or 
fly, but that once we did it ourselves ! Agassiz said, 
an angel, resembling a human form, soaring on wings, is 
nonsense. But we feel the remnants in our shoulders 
that ma}' sprout again, and capacity for any physical 
change, though it must be so that all the parts will 
correspond. All our conversation, at least with the 
lower creatures, is a going to school to learn about our 
antecedents and ancestors. We are busy about our 
genealogical tree ; for there is but one tree of life, 
however man}^ the boughs, and though we know not 



BEASTS. 255 

the future bud. Is the child's peculiar attachment to 
animals and its endless delight in their wa3's because it 
has not travelled so far awa}" from them in its own 
development as the man? As we see some bit of 
handiwork grow into proportion after some pattern 
under the restless needle, and take on its fine hues, we 
feel that our bod}' is a piece that has been long wrought 
upon, and is not finished yet ; and although we are not 
blind to the doom to be dissolved of each particular 
specimen of the human frame, yet we have dim antici- 
pations how the organism could be improved. Every 
oculist knows there never was a perfect eye. But will 
such an one never be? The old invalid statesman 
said the owner of his mortal tenement had refused to 
make repairs. Was it because of his intent to build a 
better in its place? What is the grave, or the decay 
in it, but like the heap of demolition foul and dusty on 
the street where a new structure is to rise ? The ground 
is worth more than the edifice or an}' material ; and we 
have a native trust in the architect that the ground- 
rent, which is our very being, will run on. "Have 
you finished the lecture you are going to deliver?" a 
famous speaker was asked. " Never," was his reply. 
" I have not done with you," is the threat held over 
one with whom we have an unsettled account. God 
is not done with us, or we with one another or 
with ourselves. There is sequel and consequence al- 
ways. The sinner, like the old thief that drew the 
oxen backward into his cave, wishes to leave no track 
to betray his doing. But, as the ancient mud has 
become stone to tell what creature walked over it, so 
the mire of our iniquity shall turn to a revealing petri- 



256 PKINCIPLES. 

faction on our path, and testify of our cruelt}- and 
abuse, especially to the dumb and unarmed, that could 
not return our insults, or help and defend themselves. 
There shall be long echoes from the lash of abuse and 
the slaughtering gun. Under the shadow of tjTannical 
sway over the weak and the poor must the author of 
the book of Genesis have written that man is the lower 
creation's lord. How much license to crowd these 
doubl}' depressed inferiors has been drawn from his 
words ! The time has come to deny ownership so entire 
and to accuse oppression so severe. Not onl}- a human 
slave, but whatever breathes, has rights we are bound to 
respect. " Dead men tell no tales," say the murderers, 
thinking it best to put witnesses to their crimes out of 
the way. But at the great assizes will they be ab- 
sentees, or will God count as murder only that com- 
mitted against what we call our own kind ? 

There must be some as3'lum for the injured beasts, 
which hospitals for stra}^ dogs predict. Persecuted 
birds have a notion of escape and refuge. As I sat in 
a rustic tower, some blue-tailed swallows flew to the 
trap-door. One entered, evidently in great distress. 
Others, fearing either to go in or stay out, hovered 
and stooped on their own bent beaks and fluttering 
wings, as pictures at once of beauty and despair. 
Again and again the}^ departed and returned, as if, 
like the Hebrew Psalmist, these sweet singers too 
were after some citadel of defence, and seeking an 
unseen and all-sufficient friend. Later in the day I 
learned that certain lads had been shooting at the swal- 
lows on my ploughed land, who, when remonstrated 
with, alleged it was gunning for specimens and not 



BEASTS. 25T 

for sport, a business and not a pleasure, in which 
they were engaged. Whereupon a little maiden in- 
quired if the specimens were not intended for their 
pleasure too ! It was a pregnant point to make. There 
is a gap in the Hebrew catalogue of seers. The}' give 
but an 'occasional hint of that justice to animals, as 
well as to men, without which no millennium will come 
on earth or warrant be made out for heaven. To raise 
what aspires is the duty of angel or mortal, though it 
were but a worm lifting its head in token of repentance 
of some ancient sin. Scorn is the original sin ; refusal 
to help is the fall of men, and the waving sword on the 
wall of Eden is the transgressor's remorse. 

It is not strange that we cannot conceive of morality 
in creatures to whom intelligence is refused, and that 
the}' should be ranked not among persons but things, 
the philosophic notion still being that they are but au- 
tomatons or animated tools. Rational sense or volun- 
tary expression they have none, — 

" For smiles from reason flow, to brutes denied." 

The effect of intellect is shown in them as in " this univer- 
sal frame ; " but we say it is onl}- God who is wise through 
them, not any skill of their own — as if there were even in 
us an}' wisdom but his ! Is any beast blindly instinctive 
alone and not intuitive ? The bee, with his bee-line truer 
than a minie-ball, so that its intersection with a second 
leads the hunter to the hive in the hollow of a tree ; the 
beaver, reckoning the force of the stream in his dam ; 
the squirrel constructing his acorn-store or corn-bin 
away from the frost and rain ; the bower-bird with her 
fine coffer-dam and water-works as curious as are made 

17 



258 PRINCIPLES. 

in Lake Michigan or on tlie Croton River by men ; the 
hang-bird and all the feathered tribes, choosing materials 
like lumbermen and architects, and suiting to the several 
situations their nests ; the many adaptations in the animal 
kingdom to the substance brought in, of wood or sand, 
and mud or stone, as human builders fit to the bases their 
beams, — think we that all these are but actors and acts 
in one vast as3'lum wherein is no mental sight? Then 
there is in nature no such thing as an eye ! Instinct is 
by w^hat foolish theory set down as imperceptiveness in 
an animal when it is the most sagacious faculty in man- 
kind ! It is a talent too, in both alike, by good use en- 
titled to reward. How soon the beasts appreciate our 
approval or rebuke ! I have known a motion of the 
finger and a warning tone from the lips induce a dog 
just weaned to lick instead of bite the hand. Is there 
in this no power to contrive, it being fatal to our pre- 
rogative to admit aught personal in the beast? What 
are these fair}^ lines stretched outside across 3'our window, 
catching minute moisture from the night-fog and turning 
the light into such a delicate diamond sparkle as the sun 
comes out ! With what stitcher of Honiton lace shall 
this weaver, who has retired with his loom, be com- 
pared ! The weaver is the shuttle thrown, and out of its 
bowels the threads are spun. But where on the street 
is the weaver of any stuf!' so fine ? The spider's hands 
take her into king's palaces, Solomon tells us. But no 
carving of roof or pillar can match the cords with which 
the cornice is finished at her touch, for the broom to 
sweep away. A little boy, when the housemaid came 
to cleanse the porch of cobwebs which he had admired, 
remonstrated against the ruthless blows, crying out, 



BEASTS. 259 

"These are their nests!" We know not how much, 
in the way of rigging, this spider academ}" has taught to 
men, with its computation of forces so exact, to escape 
from gravitation and anticipate the swa^'ing of the breeze, 
while b3' ever}^ sta}' and girder the pressure is distrib- 
uted as nicel}^ as in an}- ceiling or bridge, and each little 
rope tried with the hand bears an astonishing strain 
before it breaks. All our handiwork is but a cobweb 
too, which the besom of destruction will level at last ! 
If we must hem in or drive out the insects with all their 
plans, let us not forget that we are ephemera too, of a 
little longer date, and let us use some fairness in dividing 
with them the world and not be behind the Hebrew mon- 
arch b}' despising their pattern or disowning their wit. 

What conceit of man in his own glor}' appears in the 
chronic wish of his philosophy to make out against other 
animals a distinction in favor of himself! Only as his 
own he fancies an}' divine spark. All else is but scaf- 
folding and preparation, the beasts in all their beauty 
and variety but a chalking out of the human plan, the 
announcement and avant-courier of the king ! But the 
true king does not blow his own trumpet In rightly 
judging and duly caring for his subjects his honor is 
found. It ma}" be said man seeks an ideal satisfaction 
in what he rears, and the beast only a supply* of animal 
wants. But there are some creatures among whom our 
so popular utilitarian philosophy does not appear to pre- 
vail, who make subterranean mines and galleries for pure 
pleasure without search for food or dwelling or gold ; and 
what but a worse than brutal injustice can doubt that the 
spinning insects which stretch with such curious ties 
their gossamer threads in m3Tiad spots have a pleasure 



260 PRINCIPLES. 

in their task beside what their appetite may secure, as 
does the fisherman in his creel, the hunter in his trap, 
or the warrior in his camp or fort ? If there be any ab- 
sokite difference of interior frame between us and what 
we count below us, no statement of it has appeared. 

Could all the observations be gathered up, what a 
curious parallel between man and beast might be run ! 
We cannot deny likeness of temper and disposition, how- 
ever we arrogate monopoly of mind. Indeed, we use the 
same descriptive phrase for both. It is our neighbor as 
well as his horse that takes the bit in his teeth and must 
have his jaws held or broken by the curb of the law ; 
and if, instead of wildty rushing, with equal irration- 
alit}^ he refuse to go, he too balks on the road, and, like 
the obstinate steed, would rather be killed than proceed. 
Doubtless there is some cause in either case which 
should be explored in order to a cure ; but the resem- 
blance would be comic, if not sad, which gives occasion 
for the prophet's exhortation, " Be not as the horse or 
the mule," whose pertinency is not less with the lapse 
of time. The sharp distinction which the naturalist 
tells us ants make between friends and foes of their own 
kind has its instruction bettered among men and women ; 
and the moralizing of Jaques on the "poor deer, left 
and abandoned of his velvet friends," when he was in 
trouble, we find it also how easy to match ! 

" Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens ; 
'T is just the fashion. Wherefore do you look 
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there 1 " 

When Jesus bids us ask not our friends and rich neigh- 
bors, but the poor and halt and blind to the feast we 



BEASTS. 261 

make, that we may avoid a recompense, we have a 
higher strain. 

In the good of life shall not our four-footed friends 
have their share? Does not the common nature we 
talk of also include them? My little dog, when an 
alternative is presented to him, one side of which he 
prefers to the other, and 3'et is not going to refuse obedi- 
ence to m}^ command, cants his head reflectivelj" on one 
side with such curious resemblance to a man's motion in 
like case, that I cannot question that the inward process 
is similar, if not the same. Beholding so much likeness 
of animal with human traits, let us not den}' what we do 
not see, but rather develop what is latent that is best. 
We shall ourselves not miss paradise b}' making the 
humblest creature happy on earth. 

If we will give a name to God, the onl}^ alternative be- 
side pure abstraction is the concrete term of parentage. 
He is the Father. So the parental feeling, ever3'where 
infused, is the one sensitive link in which the universe 
is bound. The lioness whom I saw, in her restless walk 
through her cage, stop to lick with fierce tongue the 
3'oung among whom she trampled, and the lion in the 
Paris Conservator}^ who, Geoffro}' St. Hilaire tells us, 
stood beside his mate and laid his solemn and tawny 
paw on her breast, in the sight of him and his friend, the 
da}' their whelp died, were but examples of a sentiment 
which must have begotten what it pervades, and which, 
shining in the most brutal form, appeals to the highest, 
and finds in men and angels the reflection of itself. 

No materialism is implied in maintaining man's rela- 
tionship with the beast. The divine inspiration flows, 
as Theodore Parker said, "into bee and behemoth" as 



262 PRINCIPLES. 

well as into the soul. Each creature receives it accord- 
ing to its measure. But materialism denies that any 
creature is its receptacle, and will have nothing to do 
with any one Giver of all. It is the doctrine, not of 
unity, but of multiplicitj^ ; it accredits the elements, but 
has no faith in spirit ; it affirms origins of things, but 
disowns Origin or Originator. The spiritual philoso- 
phy admits ph3'sical germs corresponding to archet37oes, 
every person deriving from some one idea, and every 
animal or plant also having in the great mind an idea 
of its own. 



POLITICS. 203 



X. 

POLITICS. 

ALTHOUGH the Bible have spots, it is no more 
obsolete than the sun ; and while critics talk of 
the light having gone out of it, the preachers and peo- 
ple are startled with new applications of ancient texts. 
What makes daylight of duty for us as well as for the 
patriarchs is none the worse for being old. So, when 
the Psalmist warns us against " fellowship with the 
throne of iniquit}' that frameth mischief by a law," we 
seem to be in the District of Columbia, Florida, or 
Oregon ! Legal injustice is the most pernicious and 
aggravated of all wrong. An injury committed by a 
private person backed b}^ no statute, but condemned by 
some specific enactment of Congress or the Legislature, 
that fits his deed, is small and brief compared with that 
which an assumed public authority empowers and arras. 
Examples ma}^ be found in laws concerning lotteries, 
unrestricted sale of intoxicating liquors, the return of 
fugitive slaves, exclusive privileges, monopolies in trade, 
penalties disproportioned to crime, and ever}^ form of 
excessive or tyrannical tax. But laws well-meant for 
the just protection of the community may be so framed, 
that is, turned and twisted in the executive hand, as to 
work mischief in the land, as we saw in Louisiana, and 
now observe in that former part of Massachusetts long 



264 PRINCIPLES. 

ago set off under the name of Maine. It is a curiosity 
in American politics tliat in just that territory where 
tlie ignorance or ilHteracj^ is the least — the popula- 
tion of Maine being reported the best educated in the 
common branches in the whole United States — guber- 
natorial ingenuity' should have found errors in spelling 
among the mam^ petty faults for which it is decided to 
disfranchise the folks. One who was born and grew up 
amongst those farmers, teamsters, lumbermen, and fish- 
ermen on the Kennebec, Penobscot, and Androscog- 
gin, and along the shore, as well as the Supreme Court 
whose decision has just so badly broken the gubernato- 
rial chair, may know what plain people the}' are, rough in 
speech and manner, and with a grim humor that would 
have rejoiced Abraham Lincoln's heart, and with not 
much disposition to be in au}^ way cheated out of their 
rights. The over-readiness of some even of their clergy 
in the late crisis to shoulder the old revolutionary mus- 
ket again, and the harmless but resolute mob in Bangor 
show what fire the flint of arbitrar}^ imposition may 
fetch out of their cold constitutional steel, and what 
a foolish as well as gross offence was committed by 
the presuming officials who undertook so unrighteously 
to push them out of the lawful expression of their will. 
There is a wrath as of kindled shavings on the floor or 
the crackling of thorns under a pot, and there is an 
indignation like the sparkling into which the blacksmith 
provokes the reluctant metal at his forge. 

But what has this Northern council-board done more 
to be reprehended than were the acts of the disrepu- 
table Louisiana returning-board, some years since, at 
the South? These Democrats have but copied after the 



POLITICS. 265 

Republican pattern, in Shakspeare's phrase, "better- 
ing the instruction " ! That Southern manipulation of 
the ballot-box was an unwarranted liberty and an evil 
precedent indeed; and " the bad copy the mistakes of 
the good with deplorable rapidit}'." But on what sort 
or sj'stem of morality do we justify the imitation of a 
crime? Moreover, the cases in some respects are not 
parallel. Louisiana was a half-savage region, just 
emerging from the barbarism of slavery ; and if it 
was undeniably' an error to count 'in votes which were 
not cast by the freedmen, the cruel suppression which 
kept the freedmen from the polls was an offence of still 
greater shame. Never in the darkest times of the 
Si^anish Inquisition or of the despotism of the Czar has 
intimidation been carried to a greater extent ; and intimi- 
dation that prevents the ballot is fraud as real as that 
which stuffs the box with tissue-paper votes. Like 
blood compared with water it has a darkev dye. If the 
votes which shot-guns in the South hindered be reck- 
oned, the real voice of Louisiana was expressed in the 
announced result, and there was no effectual fraui. 
But the voice of Maine was choked outright by its 
elected head. In the former case votes that had been 
barred out were no doubt improperly counted in. In 
the latter case the votes which freemen had thrown were 
arbitrarily- counted out, till over sixt}^ towns and cities 
had their representation as local law-makers and as 
factors in the next presidential election absolutely re- 
fused. It cannot be expected that people will sit down 
quieth' under an abuse of technicalities through which 
their citizenship is thus destroyed, or be content with a 
false balance by which their political weight is cancelled, 



266 PRINCIPLES. 

and endure a governor's foot in the scales to nullify the 
will he should express, and turn into ciphers tens of 
thousands of men. The English Star-Chamber decis- 
ions which we shook off a hundred 3'ears ago must not 
be restored among us by plotters who warn their own 
political friends against the trap of phraseology and 
informality which they are setting for the other side. 

The danger to this countr}^ is not from the universal 
suffrage about which our Jeremiahs and Cassandras 
have croaked so much, — no, not though it were univer- 
sal among women as well as men, — but from a per- 
verted construction of the forms of law, to work intents 
opposite from the purposes for which the}^ were devised. 
The Apostle Paul was as good a politician as he was 
theologian when he said, " The letter killeth, but the 
spirit maketh alive ; " and the unwritten or higher law 
■will in this country, so long as it is true to its fathers 
and founders, be invoked whenever the written one is 
framed and fashioned into a weapon against just and 
equal human claims. We shall ask, What is the use of 
governors if the}' are to be more overbearing and trucu- 
lent than the old kings? Wh}^ call that a democracy 
which is an oligarchy in fact? To the honor and credit 
of the true democracy of the country, from all its best 
leaders comes repudiation of the base and villanous con- 
spiracy' in Maine. If the Maine executive was but the 
tool of an intrigue from the Capitol of the nation, and if 
the key was pitched for the note he was to strike in his 
place, the tuning-fork was sounded very secretly in his 
ear, and those who held it dare not appear or show 
their hand. They that set on the dogs sometimes run 
away! Indeed, democracy cannot afford, by fathering 



POLITICS. 267 

such a crime, to commit suicide. Too much nobilitj' is 
left in it for that, and too much honesty is in the 
country for aristocrac}' to be good policy under the 
democratic name. What is democrac}' but popular 
government ? The demos is the mass ; and what sort 
of rule " b}" and for and of the people," according to 
our famous accepted definition, is it to use ever}^ trick 
into which the statutory language touching elections 
can be tortured to exclude ' ' plain people " from having 
in legislative halls the delegates of their choice? It 
were a trumpet so constructed as to extinguish the 
voice. It w^ere to make the people twist a rope for 
their own necks. An uncrossed t^ an undotted ^, ditto 
under a column of figures, the word scattering with its 
meaning not resolved into all its component parts al- 
though the name which has the majorit}-^ is quite clear, 
a vertically instead of horizontally inscribed ballot, the 
absence of some single selectman, and the signature of 
some pro tempore clerk, or any distinguishing mark, — 
such are the strands out of which the astute gubernato- 
rial hangman's cord and noose are woven for the good 
people's throat ! But the good people itself, a little 
puzzled to know b}' w^hat law^'er-like jugglery it has 
been converted into a criminal from its honest will, and 
angrily rubbing its threatened head, declines to be sus- 
pended so. That proposed execution will never take 
place. To hoist a State to the gallows requires more 
strength than happens to be in the executioner's hand. 
The}' who are of the people have a surmise, vague but 
strong, that if anybody in the premises ought to be 
hung, it is. rather the would-be sheriff and nominal 
chief magistrate himself ! 



268 PRINCIPLED. 

It is not likely that any part}^ old and regular and 
with a right to be in this countr}^, like the Democratic, 
would ever have conceived and hatched an}^ thiug like 
this last unspeakable disgrace. Such political vileness 
was begot of that financial dishonest}^ which goes b}^ 
the name of Greenback, in an ill-assorted and baleful 
union with the Democracy, of which somebody ought to 
have forbidden the banns. We have had sometimes a 
coalition, and by it all parties among us have been dis- 
honored more or less by turns. The present dodge is 
fusion ! It is a melting together of parties that have 
no affinity or real natural bond. Whatever was fair or 
candid in either it will be found very hard to recover 
from the melting-pot. It is difficult to restore the 
stamp and edge and image on a medal that has been 
once thrown into the fire. It was not silver or gold, 
but pinchbeck in this case ; and it would not be strange 
if the furnace of public indignation, with which the usu- 
ally calm Supreme Court that was appealed to burns 
so hotl}^, should gape for all who have been concerned 
in the flagrant trespass that has flung its lurid light, 
be3'ond any calcium blazing, into the remotest borders 
of our land. For no disrepute visited on a man can 
match the infamy with which he can brand his own 
name ; and the real authors of this sin and new Amer- 
ican treason will have their characters blackened past 
washing to all time. No glorious stigmas will theirs 
be on the cross which they have made for themselves. 
From dignitaries such as the}^ the neighbors will shrink 
and withhold their hands. Even a president of the 
United States who has any wise degraded the station 
he held is sometimes treated with little respect when 



POLITICS. 269 

he has retired to private life. It will be charity to let 
the lesser luminaries in this base spectacle and igno- 
minious show, leave whatever ill odor it ma_y, go out 
altogether in the dark when they shall have been dis- 
possessed of the posts in which for a time they un- 
worthily stood. 

In a free countr}', whose citizens are jealous of their 
reserved rights and easil}' stirred by injustice to resist- 
ance, no transgression can be so great as that malver- 
sation or malfeasance in office which moves to rebellion 
and excites contention. If blood should flow, they would 
be responsible who have instigated or aided and abetted 
the civil strife. Men differ congenitall}' in the acuteness 
of their moral feeling ; and some seem to be so devoid 
of conscience, in their relations to society and the body 
politic, that color-blindness is the true figure for their 
defect of inward sight. But as those who cannot dis- 
tinguish red from blue or white are not fit for pilots or 
engineers, so such as -are unable to discern betwixt 
wisdom and cunning, truth and lying, magnanimity and 
what is mean, ought not to be conductors of the train 
of our civil affairs or to manage the ship of State. If 
they attempt to steal a legislature, a commonwealth, 
or the government of a nation, it is grand and not petty 
larcen}^, highway robbery and not ordinary swindling, 
in which these worst of thieves are engaged ; and un- 
less the harpies that prey on the whole people in this 
continent are pursued till the}' be exterminated and 
extinct, our reunion is a fiction, patriotism is plunder, 
and our political daj's are numbered, or chaos is at 
hand to invite the sway of the sword. 

For what is the appearance which this swindling oper- 



270 PRINCIPLES. 

ation, not in stocks, but on human beings, presents? A 
sham legislature, in a State House whose members call 
themselves representatives, but who do not represent 
the State, and as a body were never elected by it, but 
have by tricksters been construed to stand for it, as a 
doll stands for a bab}" because b}' certain artificial springs 
it moves its limbs and makes a disagreeable noise. 
When a minorit}^ installs itself over a majorit}^ in this 
countr}'' we have a tjTanny as real and oppressive as 
though we had taken back the English Parliament and 
King George to rule us, and all honest parties and 
decent men should join to put it down. A native of the 
abused State and an American citizen — which by his 
business and profession or by any forfeiture one has 
not ceased to be, though he is a Christian minister — 
may see and denounce in such a transaction the most 
alarming menace to all religion and. civilization in our 
land. It is a broad usurpation and wholesale cheat. 
It is that forger^^ on a commonwealth which, committed 
on a small scale for a few dollars, sends a man to jail. 

But does not a clerg3^man go out of his way to meddle 
with politics under any circumstances, however grave? 
So it was said when we protested against the extension 
of slave territory, petitioned for its restriction, expressed 
disapproval of a Fugitive Slave bill, or ventured even to 
pray for the slave. The Almighty was brought under- 
the political ban ! But without such demonstrations, of 
religious feeling in the cause of -humanit}', this country- 
would not have been free. As one nation it would to- 
day not be at all ; and now, when once more the forms 
of law which were made to protect are used to strangle 
and destro}', as if the cord of an Alpine guide were 



POLITICS. 271 

converted into an executioner's rope, it is time for the 
pulpit to interfere again. 

What part}", any more than the whole people, can 
profit b}" A^llany of this style? A party, the Greenback, 
which is but for a moment, does not deserve to be called. 
A local democracy is involved with it for the time. But 
from that real, large democrac}', which must be always 
a potent if not the prevailing principle in our institu- 
tions, it is as alien as the Lords are from the Commons 
or an empire from the republic ; and if by any thing, 
then by wicked combining of this sort the man on horse- 
back, who is predicted as our ruler for life, would be 
hurried up. It is the Greenback notion of making irre- 
deemable paper a legal tender in paj'ment of our debts, 
which, pooling its issues with a false and temporary 
democrac}^, is with such logical propriety consummated 
in the high-handed and rapacious seizure of a State, to 
tr}^ in vain to command its treasury and all its goods. 
It no more truly represents the State than do the rags 
which it would pass for money till they rot, represent 
any value of silver or gold. 

But for all these theoretic and consequent practical 
assumptions a remedy will be furnished by the numerical 
and moral reserved power of the people, a residue and 
remainder which no perverters of trust can long succeed 
in neutralizing and affronting. 

Meantime some benefit will result if we learn from 
the vexatious experience how some of our political 
moralists have misplaced their fears in thinking uni- 
versal suffrage to be the rock on which we might be 
wrecked, when for our vessel the reef of peril is on 
just the opposite shore of a partial suffrage, for which the 



272 PRINCIPLES. 

universal one is on' occasion so iniquitoiisly exchanged. 
With the people that framed our Constitution pubUc hon- 
esty is better guarded and our destiny is more secure 
than with any refined or learned or wealthy class. Voters 
too may learn that they cannot be careless any more. 

The root of trouble, the gi'ound of jeopardy, and the 
occasion of reasonable terror, is tlie vicious habit we 
have in our philosoph}" contracted, of dividing the whole 
man or mind into distinct functions, which, like the water- 
tight compartments of a boat or the fire-proof chambers 
of a building, have no communication with each other, — 
a plan as bad for the soul and the community as it is 
good for the building or the boat. We sa3% politics is 
politics, business is business, a bargain is a bargain, 
and religion is religion. Do you wish to trade, there is 
the exchange, the market, the brokers' board, the bank, 
and the gold room ! Would you worship, there is the 
chapel, vestry, and church, and Sunday for the service 
to begin and end, and your religion to be finished up 
on the spot ! Do 3'ou want to vote, choose 3'our list 
of candidates, whom for an}^ whim or reason, selfish or 
generous, 3'ou have a right to support ! You can leave 
your reverence in the cathedral aisles and 3"0ur honesty 
in the shop when 3^ou carr3" 3'our bit of paper for 3'our 
clique to the ward-room in a school or engine house ! 
But all this dissection of 3'ourself, be it said, is unholy 
and profane. Your integrit3' should be in the convention 
as well as at the counter, and 3'our religion in the caucus 
as well as in the pew. That love of man or love of coun- 
try is baseless which rests not on the love of God ; and it 
is because we neither love nor fear him as we ought 
that we have fallen into this spiritual calamit3^, and that 



POLITICS. 273 

our chief passion is no longer, as with the fathers., patri- 
otic, but partisan. The love of party more and more, 
in many quarters, carries the da}^ ovcr love of countrj' ; 
and patriotism, among such as conduct the nefarious 
transactions to wliich I have referred, is a lost virtue, 
even as antiquarians inform us there are lost arts. 

The inducement to part}' extravagance and unprin- 
cipled deceit is in the immense patronage of eight}'" 
thousand offices, which the general government has to 
bestow. AYhile this tremendous and manifold lure shall 
be held out to the hand of the incoming administration 
to dispense to its mercenaries, during the term it shall 
hold the reins, the diverse salaries and fat jobs to as 
many hungry clamoring mouths, so long the wide-spread 
corruption will hold on. Civil reform means that the 
various posts and appointments which the supreme offi- 
cer controls shall be given to subordinate officials, not 
as rewards of partisan zeal and as victors' spoils, but for 
merit and fitness and while good behavior shall last ; 
and that our elected chief magistrate shall no longer con- 
sider it as his main prerogative to turn out all former 
incumbents of a different stripe of opinion from his own, 
and then feed the pap of the exchequer to famished as- 
pirants of his set, as a municipal officer ladles out soup 
to the poor. An impartial equity of civil appointment 
would be, not partisanship, but patriotism, for which may 
we, by a good Providence, be inspired and prepared ! 
Meanwhile such a process as we saw going on in Maine 
was a.dismal, lamentable, and wickedly contemptible set- 
back to any worthy tendency and noble hope. There- 
fore should it and its operators and apologists by all good 
men be reproved. 

18 



274 PRINCIPLES. 

Let us be no partisans in politics or religion. One 
party must for the time prevail. But while we would 
have the best party go in, let us be glad to have the 
other strong ; for every successful party should be a 
cratch ed trustee, and such doings as we have seen in 
Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and Maine show that no 
party can be trusted out of custody of the people, which 
is too great, and, notwithstanding all the telegraphs and 
railroads, moves too slowly, more like a raft than a clip- 
per, to commit all together any atrocity, as it is too 
honest to countenance crime. 

We cannot, however, yield to the natural course of 
things. Evolution in nature is order. In societ}^ it is 
not salvation, but drift. In governmental administra- 
tion it is foundering unless duty be at the helm. 

Seeing how all parties with long possession of power 
grow corrupt, let us not wish an}^ party easil}*, invariably, 
or by a large majorit}^ in this country ever to prevail. 
Let it be displaced by some other whenever it is guiltj' of 
fraud, or confines the distribution of loaves and fishes to 
itself. Perpetual vigilance is the price not only of liberty 
but of purity in public aff'airs ; and if one political side 
in the use of enormous patronage becomes exclusive, 
the other side ought to have its turn, till there be better 
behavior of both. But both must abide the unswerving 
divine law ; and if either wish to slip out of that 3^oke it 
but proves its own sin. If politics have nothing to do 
with religion, if the town-house shall ever be divorced 
from the meeting-house, the ballot-box insulated from 
the pulpit, the vote parted from the prayer, Sunday 
separated from the week, and the community disown 
its God, then the State will be doomed. . Every politi- 



POLITICS. 275 

oal question is a moral one, ever)^ case in court involves 
principle, as ever}' sick-bed is the scene of the phj'si- 
cian's fidelity or malpractice ; and although an}' profes- 
sional man leaves his province if he meddle with details 
which he does not understand, it is his sphere to ex- 
pound the moral law. 

When Christ would unite Jew and Greek, how we 
stick in the bark and cling to the letter of his meaning, 
and do not perceive that what he would intend now is 
a cordial understanding between existing peoples, such 
as England and America, Austria and Italy, Germany 
and France, of Russia in the East with the United 
States in the West, every kindred and people and tribe 
and tongue being embraced in the horoscope he cast, — 
in a prophec}' how far from fulfilment 3'et, while the 
Californian hates the Chinaman, and the Irishman the 
negro, and the Hibernian the British, and Peru Chili, 
and the Prussian the Gaul. 

The old Bible anticipates our supposed ps3-chologic 
discovery, and always treats nations as persons, moral 
and responsible. The}^ are such as truly as are indi- 
viduals. What a mob of confused and contradictory 
inclinations the individual commonly is, there being 
few of us that ought not to have the riot-act read 
to ourselves ! Our particular natures are no more at- 
tuned to that pure and free personalit}^ which is the true 
state of a human soul than were Israel and Eg^-pt, 
T3're and Sidon, Nineveh 'and Edom, Babj'lon and 
Capernaum, whom seer or Saviour personified and apos- 
trophized, admonished, and summoned to the judgment- 
seat. The diverse characters and conflicting qualities 
of different realms are show^n as clearl}^ as are the dis- 



276 PRINCIPLES. 

positions to virtue or vice of an}^ of the personages in 
an}^ one of their borders or at any era of the world. 
Is not Great Britain proud and France vainglorious, 
Austria haughty, Russia bearish, Prussia brutal and 
rough, Turke}^ cruel, the Spaniard an aristocrat, the 
Jew jealous and mone3-making, the Italian lazy and 
vagabond, the American restless and rebellious, and 
the. South American disorderly and with his neighbor 
always at strife? Putting good traits on the opposite 
side of the balance-sheet, need we say which one of 
these is polite and which dignified, which is reverent 
or enterprising, which lives on its memory and which 
in its hope ? Is the spirit obsolete and gone out of that 
Christian faith which has purposed from the first to 
overcpme the grudging and env}'^ between hostile races, 
and make this footstool of the planet, with the conver- 
sational lightning's aid, a friendl}^ meeting-house ? So 
long as we nurse or allow any prejudice in our breast 
against color or kind of the human species, and would 
drive the Indian to the Rocky Mountains, or push back 
the Mongolian into the sea, or give to. the African but 
the sharp alternative of exodus to a strange ungenial 
clime, or oppression at the muzzle of the shot-gun, crowd- 
ing and cheating and disfranchising him at home, so long 
and so far we contravene the genius of a religion which 
will never be antiquated or useless till the growl of an- 
ger and the roar of war have died away, and till those 
standing armies are disbanded which are the canine 
cutting teeth of nations, and kingdoms and republi<js 
shall become a brotherl}^ band. 

Politics is the art, in public or private, of getting along 
together, — the agreement of individuals with the com- 



POLITICS. 277 

munity which the}" create and are created b}', as well as 
concert among those live aggregates we call countries, 
between which the continents are shared, independence 
becomes a fault}' individualism when we fail to contribute 
and gladl}' to make ourselves a whole burnt-offering to 
the commonweal. The old doctrine that we part with a 
portion of our personal freedom and right in order to be- 
come a community is not onl}^ erroneous, but the very 
opposite of the truth. Men are free and have their full 
rights in communities alone. Is the savage free? Has 
the hermit all his rights ? Is the recluse ever the greatest 
of men, or is he a monster whose peculiarity Hes in the 
mutilation of his bod}- and mind ? In proportion as we 
cut the threads of that network of universal sj'mpathy 
which is the circulation of the human frame, we become 
not giants but dwarfs, overgrown onlj' in selfishness, and 
undersized in the joy of our nature as in the generosity 
of our traits. Accordance with all with whom we live, 
by concession and sacrifice of ever}' thing but honor and 
truth, is the common law, beyond all that passes with 
barristers by that name. When Charles Sumner deliv- 
ered his oration on peace as "the true grandeur of 
nations," that great lawyer, Jeremiah Mason, said he 
should as soon think of getting up a society against 
thunder and lightning as against war. But we have 
learned that man can modify the climate by art, and 
by love and justice he will prevent or moderate civil 
storms. There are individualists, that is, self-seekers 
against the general good, on a large as well as a little 
scale ; and the bigger the dimensions the heavier the 
curse. When the Polish Counts would all be sover- 
eigns, Poland ceased to be. An American explained 



278 PRINCIPLES. 

his incuriosity to see the Queen by saying, *' All are 
sovereigns in the United States." So much the worse 
were it for the United States ! But when Victoria 
refuses to invite or speak to Robert Peel and Wil- 
liam Gladstone because of their conscientious political 
course, she oversteps her princely prerogative, and 
becomes an individualist rather than the organ, and 
representative of the realm. The Pope is but a huge 
individualist in attempting to bind the world by his 
encyclical, sj^^llabus, or bull. The Orthodox divine is 
ail ecclesiastical individualist when he preaches total 
depravity for all but his set of saints ; for the human 
race is not a sinner, and never fell ! In both the Lib- 
eral and the Orthodox church, laj'ing the stress on per- 
sonal instead of universal salvation was individualism, 
and in principle a sellSshness of the most tremendous 
sort. But its main haunt was the Calvinistic desk. 
When Dr. Lyman Beecher was dying he wished one to 
read to him the passage about Paul's good fight and 
ready crown. But when the reader of the verse went 
on, " and not to me onl}^," the sturdy and polemic vet- 
eran bade him stop. He was not concerned about 
other people's crowns, but only his own. Contend we 
must on the way to that victory which is a righteous 
peace; as Jesus did with the. " small cords," which 
James Walker said he would not have used at the end 
of his ministry, while John Weiss thought nothing in 
the gospel mOre authentic than the hissing of that lash. 
The difference between a conservative and a reforma- 
tory mind was never more happily displa^'ed. 

But no disinterested historian can doubt the part 
which that name and power, influence or leaven, we call 



POLITICS. 279 

the Christ has plaj^ed in persuading the segments of 
our humanity that the}^ belong to the whole being from 
which they come. So much the Divinit}* can do b}- a 
man ! George Augustus Sala, the English traveller and 
reporter, seeing in Ital}^ a statue of Napoleon, remarks 
that he alone of the moderns can bear to be put in the 
nude and classic stjle of art ; for how ridiculous, he sa^s, 
to represent Lord Brougham or the Duke of Wellington 
so ! Jesus, who is in such contrast of character with 
any man of this world, needs no Jewish costume, nor 
more than a setting for the splendor of his excellence 
in the circumstances of his time. There is nothing 
accidental or superficial in his swa}' or in its hold on 
a future age ; for his ideal, while working like leaven, 
and claiming the elements for its growth like a seed, is 
still but as a transforming atom in this vast lump of 
our nature, or like a green sapling in the wood. The 
thorough-paced critic is blind often in this case to the 
distinction between the individual and the t^'pe. In 
the great Master whom the Church embodies and owns 
for its head we have a Godhood and a manhood too ; 
and it is no longer the details of his biograph}', or even 
sentences of his speech, that signif}^ so much as the 
living pattern he has grown into for the conscious soul. 
If made a finality, he were a fetich. But, as a bit of 
divine beauty modelled in claj^ there is beside naught 
worthier of the Supreme Artist ; and if the reverent 
feeling for him be characterized as idolatry, let us 
scrutinize the proper application of that term. In our 
time the chief idol is not the Christ who is an ideal, 
but it is matter and the material world. The idolater 
is the mere scientist ; he is not the devotee. As a 



280 PEINCIPLES. 

native reverence cannot be extinguished in the human 
breast, if it be fixed on nothing in the wa}^ of person, 
it will be fastened on something in the way of law, or in 
the shape which law grossly takes in earthly stuff ; and 
if we idolize aught, is the size of our idol the impor- 
tant point? Be it small, uncouth, and gi^otesque as an 
.Eg3'ptian image, or big as a firmament, the superstition . 
in adoring it is all the same. Stock and stone, or planet 
and sun, one beast, a bug, beetle, crawling reptile, or 
the whole animal kingdom, protoplasm or finished uni- 
verse, is to the principle indifferent, if on any thing 
outward our homage be set. Any worship of Jesus, 
that historic man and morsel of our race, is idola- 
try'', but of a nobler sort than the worship of fossil re- 
mains or of the Milky Way. But the worship of Deity 
in him and in all men is the loftiest exercise of the 
mind ; and the turning of our attention to the union 
and reunion out of all strife of the jarring human ele- 
ments to own and obey the Father is the politics of that 
city of God which is some time to show its foundations 
on earth as in heaven. It is no wonder or dishonor 
that all the millions who have gazed on the cross should 
revere the temper out of which the blood there trickled 
down ! Atonement is what it meant. 

The reconciler and reconciliation must include also 
in one the Church and State. There are corruptions in 
both. But in the dismal game of iniquity the latter 
so commonly wins that the scheme eagerly urged of 
turning the former into it so as to. have -nothing left 
but the State is hostility and treason to mankind. Be- 
cause particular local churches have shown a bias irra- 
tional or inhumane, there is no reason to denounce 



POLITICS. 281 

and destro}" the Church, or confound it with the political 
machine, with whose uses to keep the peace and pro- 
tect industry we cannot dispense, any more than is 
the profligacy in the members of some families cause 
for abolishing the home. Societ}' is a double-flowering 
plant, and the inner row of its petals is the Church. 
The time for the State to decease ma}' come when we 
have risen above our quarrelling, and our utilitarian 
plane. But the Church, even in heaven, will never dis- 
appear. The radical censor while he assails ecclesias- 
tical abuses is in place ; but in attacking the Church 
he runs against the bosses of the Almight}^, or kicks 
against the pricks. Societ}', when it shall be perfected, 
may reabsorb into itself ever}'^ political or ecclesiasti- 
cal form which it has in its imperfection put forth. But 
it would stab a vital part and commit suicide could it 
rend apart even the organic Church to-da}'. That we 
must not cut that thread of tradition which we at the 
moment of our little earthly span compose is now taught 
with equal emphasis by the scientist and ecclesiastic ; 
and when infidel or atheist levels his organ of destruc- 
tiveness and the battery of his brain against all relig- 
ious institutions, we rejoice to look around, and see that 
in spite of the repeated discharge not onh' Liberalism, 
but Orthodoxy, Episcopac}', and Romanism still stand 
to make of his cannon a popgun, whose execution has 
onl}' the measure of a little noise or smoke. 

Besides, to the demand for secularizing the vState we 
must reply b}' an inquir}- what secularit}' is. It is the 
course of things and the train of aflfairs. Literalh', it 
is the following, personal or of principle, which gets 
established in time. It is the logic of events. It is 



282 PRINCIPLES. 

human conduct as the sequel and consequence of human 
thought. The import of the Latin sceculum is scarce 
expressed in the English age. What, then, in the line 
of progress has heen the human connection, like a 
coupling of the cars ? Surely it has been no discarding 
of the gods. The c,ycle of dispensation was created 
through Christ, sa3's the writer to. the Hebrews. Irre- 
ligion would throw us from the track which from the 
earliest times has been pursued. It would be disinte- 
gration and no reconstruction. It would, especially in 
this land, not deepen and propel, but dam or divert, 
the social stream; for it were a special impiety to the 
fathers, who niade fear of God the beginning and the 
basis of our State. By what strange and insane rever- 
sal of sense has secularity come to mean organized 
unbelief ? To be fair .and just to all our citizens, and 
to govern by equal laws, it seems there must be no relig- 
ious atmosphere in our schools, pra3'ers in our legis- 
latures or judicial courts, chaplains in army or" navy, 
oath or affirmation, in Heaven's ear, of witness in the 
box or of prisoner at the bar ! Law-maker, high offi- 
cer, or judge, if he would shun guilt of treason to the 
republic, must never take the sacred name on his public 
lips ; nor must we let any convicted criminal in the last 
extremity appeal for justice or mercy to a higher bench. 
As, in tyrannical or revolutionary times, when ■ the 
headsman was ready, the voice of condemned inno- 
cence, that would cry at once to the crowd below and 
to the skies above, has been drowned by the beating of 
drums and the shouts of the mob, so to all petitions 
referred to an Omnipotent Arbiter let us be made deaf 
hy the loud, calculated, and utilitarian din! This 



POLITICS. 283 

would be a secularity of selfishness, of endless con- 
tention and bottomless despair, substituted for what 
has alwa^^s existed to console the abandoned and for- 
lorn, naniel}', that leading by mutual bonds in a relig- 
ious trust by which men amid this world's dangers have 
hung together, like travellers amid Alpine crevasses- 
to the cord of their guide. What are statesman and 
churchman but one and the same man ? 

In this better civil service, which all religious ser- 
vice issues in or is, there is one more reconciliation of 
science with faith. The worst foes are those of our 
own household, and science and faith are brethren that 
have fallen out by the way. When Samuel Rogers, 
the poet, was told respecting certain persons who he 
knew were in some trouble together, that {he}" were 
" like a t>and of brothers," he answered that he was 
well aware of their disagreements, but had not sup- 
posed it was so bad as that ! Let us trust that art, 
science, political econoni}', and religion will be a sis- 
terhood, if that gentler name be a more harmonious 
one. 

Science gazing up or down through its lens cannot 
rule out that other " inward eye which is the bliss of 
solitude," because what appears to it is too great to be 
verified by the test of the understanding. But the theo- 
logian must no longer, as true religion never did, tell 
us of a six days' creation, of a universal deluge, or of 
any miracles that look like juggles with substances 
suddenl}' and unlawfulh' transformed. Such tales we 
maivel at, but do not admire. The food in the corn, 
the fish in the sea, and wine in the vine3'ard feed our 
wonder ; but the reported prodigious multiplj'ings and 



284 PKINCIPLES. 

dislocations, as aught more than pictures, affront our 
mind ; and our crediting them is the blasphemy of sup- 
posing that God would go back on us and on himself, 
and contradict his own lessons to our eyes. Stories of 
a resurrection of decomposed bodies, of a blasted fig- 
tree, or of a Roman coin from the mouth of the first 
fish that should bite a hook, lack dignity as much as 
rationalit}^ Science will furnish better figures of power 
that have the signal advantage we find in all observed 
truth. 

This reconciliation is not equalization of angels or of 
men. As great trees furnish masts for admirals, so the 
forest of humanity supplies great men. The hills en- 
rich the plains ; and without heroes the world were 
hard and dead as an ivor}' ball. Individuality is the 
condition of communion. But individualism and com- 
munism are ugly and ungracious twins ; and the division 
of society into mutually misunderstood classes opens 
intervening morasses, which are the breeding-places of 
strikes and riots, of feverish excitements and mobs. 
It is said that in Sable Island the loosened horses draw 
oflf into different sets, the lame going one way, and the 
sound in limb another. But it is not a good example for 
men ! A better pattern is set by cows in the pasture, 
that lick each other's faces even across the fences, than 
by such as lock horns. We are but vagabonds and 
bandits until we exist to serve our race. Stars in clus- 
ters, plants in beds, trees in groves, beasts in herds, 
and birds in flocks show how we should live and grow ; 
and when we behold heaven's grace in a great man, 
let us not straightway excommunicate him because he 
is better and wiser than we ! To exclude Robertson in 



POLITICS. 285 

England or Parker in Anierica is a mistake, if indeed 
it be a misfortune and a bad sign for the Church when 
the saints are outside ! For rehgion cannot be put 
into any radical or conservative pigeon-hole. Said 
Ta3'lor, the Bethel preacher, "I own part of Boston 
Common, and I will never tell which part it is ! " It is 
the noble universal soul in Jesus by which we are re- 
deemed, and he saves us less b}" his blood as he shecls 
it than as it runs in his veins. When did he ever make 
of civil and religious duty two things ? He could do it 
no more than Solomon could divide asunder the living 
child. He refers us for judgment to that spirit which 
has an inlet to ever}' heart. The philosoph}' of utility 
and experience would sa}', Act on the consent of the 
competent and for the greatest good of the greatest 
number, — a rule which would stop procedure and block 
the way till we should ascertain what is the greatest good 
and who are the competent ! We must go to " the 
Holy Ghost the Comforter ; " else we are put upon an 
inclined plane or sliding-scale of personalities, — first 
Jesus, then the Virgin, next her mother, whose names 
are called, whose bones are kept, and whose pra3'ers are 
invoked, but whose worship lets us down from all our 
reaching up to the Supreme. Let us beware what we 
adore! "My name will I not give to another." The 
name of God is not in our Constitution. But it is in a 
more venerable instrument that has needed no amend- 
ments, the Declaration of Independence ; and no rose, 
lil}', eagle, lion, or liberty and union, for a war-cry or in 
the blazonry of banners, can so shine or sound ! What 
our .agreement consists in all may feel, but none can 
define. It is in a glance ; for who can tell how far, 



286 PRINCIPLES. 

even into heaven, a look may go? It is in a tone ; for 
there are accents of the human voice which the Sera- 
phim must overhear. It is in a smile ; for there are 
smiles that include the universe ! 

Jesus the Christ is the chosen name, because he that 
bore it resisted the whole evil tendency that was .down- 
ward in the gravitation of mankind. What a memory 
that name means, still pungent and sweet ! The cradle 
takes it to rock the new-born babe with, and the bier 
catches it in the procession to the tomb. It pierced 
into the catacombs of the first disciples, and it hangs 
around uncounted gravej^ards that hold the once throb- 
bing dust. It is a sign that what in us once aspired 
shall ascend again, lie low as it may now. It desig- 
nates nothing carnal but what is latent in our bosom 
waiting to be awaked. 

If politics be the art of getting along together, in ruling 
a city and composing civil strife, it has, to order and 
harmonize our faculties, another interior sphere ; and 
there is a wider reach than Paul suspected in his own 
words when he besought the Corinthians to be recon- 
ciled to God. But Bishop Butler raised a new question 
in charging on nature the same difficulties that exist in 
revelation ; for the moral sense finds it hard to stomach 
how much that providentially occurs ! No moral stand- 
ard can cover the whole ground, as may be shown 
in a single flagrant illustration. Dr. Channing, whose 
religion was a total morality as much as any other 
man's, has in his most famous paper well arraigned 
Napoleon for his selfish ambition and man}^ other im- 
perial faults. But Channing does not recognize the 
import of that piece of nature, that so exceptional and 



POLITICS. 287 

phenomenal man, hewn by circumstances out of the 
rock of reality, whom we call Bonaparte, — not so 
much Emperor of France as dominator of the world ! 
There was a daimonic as well as voluntary portion of 
his soul. He had a star, although it was not the one 
that led to Bethlehem. He was the child of destin}^, 
spoiled child of fortune though he became. He rode 
for a while in that chariot of the Lord, under whose 
wheels at last he fell. His ablest critic has not an 
appreciable fraction of his enormous weight. For this 
was the one man who could seize the wild horses of 
anarchy b}^ the rein, who could curb and check revolu- 
tionary excess, and say, "Gentlemen, come to order," 
in that chaos of blood and fire into which a nation was 
cast. Aught corrupt afterwards in his motives or insin- 
cere in his speech Heaven will compensate and men 
must condemn. But how wrong and narrow wholl}" 
to cover and cancel anybod3"'s services with his sins ! 
His sins were indeed grave, but his services were 
immense, although not even a clerical eulogist, like 
Abbott, his American admirer and biographer, can 
persuade us to make a Sunda3'-school book of the 
annals of his reign. The statesman he was is shown 
by his word in the civil code, and the soldier by his 
hand on the sword. This modern mob-hater and foe 
of lawlessness, hurling at disorder his deathl}^ dart, 
was, as much as Attila, at least the scourge of God ; 
and in some dark fashion he too was an angel from the 
sky. Out of its cloud leaped this thunderbolt of w^ar. 
Did not this armed head of democrac}' prepare for the 
republic of to-day? He was the savior, if alternately 
the oppressor, of France. This solid and subtle Cor- 



288 ■ PRINCIPLES. 

sican was a consummate actor, as he made the costly 
vase he shivered to pieces on the floor and the hat 
he tossed into the corner of the room, in affected pas- 
sion or actual rage, a language to tell his scorn and 
his resolve. " In comparison with my purpose what," 
he asked, " are a million of men?" Battle against old 
authority was his mission ; his unparalleled magnetism 
of his troops was his certificate ; and he wanted to meet 
Scipio and the other great generals on the other side 
of the grave, although he said with a smile, " Such an 
assembly might even there occasion some alarm ! " 
Who will pronounce the verdict for such a man or an- 
ticipate the award? Who can deny the use Providence 
had for movements of which he was the centre? He 
was a strange religionist! Of all tributes to Jesus 
Christ his, in conversation with General Bertrand, is 
the most striking. Men have never known what to 
do with this prodigy of power, and perhaps angels 
do not ! He cannot quite be subjected to weight and 
measure by any yet invented ethical yardsticks or 
scales. The size of him is so monstrous, and the 
conflict of good and evil in him so dire ; his anger 
was so dreadful, and he had a winsomeness so com- 
plete, that into no crucible for our analysis will he 
readily go. Of downright meanness our judgment can 
easil}^ dispose. But greatness defies us by being, while 
it lasts, simple and one. Charlemagne or the Russian 
Peter composing nations, Luther and Sakya Mouni re- 
forming faith, and Shakspeare and Goethe setting a 
language with gems, before which all in the mine turn 
pale, are alike sent of God, and not to be damned for 
a defect, more than a gan-ship should be for a knot in 



POLITICS. 289 

her bulwarks or a California pine for a worm in its 
bark. Mohammed was the same man in the closet or 
in the field. Did not Jesus for a moment think of re- 
sorting to arms? Was not Washington as good as 
William Penn? Does Seward the diplomat rank the 
warrior Grant? The circumstance does not signify so 
much as the aim. In strife or in peace dut}^ is all. 

The French historian, Nisard, sa3's Caesar had charm. 
How else explain Napoleon's hold on his men, so great 
that when the Pope, being a prisoner in Paris, adjured 
the sentinel to let him pass, the answer, with presented 
bayonet, was. "If it were the bod}" of our Lord that 
would go out here, I should run it through. I have 
been in many a bloody battle with my master, and ex- 
pect to have to go through hell for him 3'et ! " It is 
difficult to believe there was no heart in one to whom 
his soldiers were so attached ! Yet he told Talleyrand, 
when friends had deceased, "I have no time to occupy 
myself with the dead." This sa3-ing makes one remember 
another and sacred sentence from which it would almost 
seem to have been borrowed. When the excuse of a 
father's funeral was offered for not following Jesus, he 
replied, "Let the dead bury their dead." "We can- 
not judge him, he is too great," said Thackera}" of 
Goethe. We cannot judge an}' one. We cannot apply 
the moral law to the whole of the humblest life ; and 
our inability is not lessened by the immensity of the 
scale on which humanity acts. But such cases and 
considerations show out of how many still jarring ele- 
ments the reconciliation, proposed in all just politics, 
must be brought to pass. Politics is morality not of 
a private person, but of the multitude, as made parts 



290 PRINCIPLES. 

of each other b}^ an organic law. It is fair dealing of 
fellow-men together in complicated ties. It is equit}^ in 
the web of relations, and it is the weaving into beauty 
of all our bonds. It should be as worth}^ a title as the 
grander one, statesmanship, and it reaches more widely. 
Only the base tricks of politicians have given it a bad 
name. 

The real atonement, which is the object alike of re- 
ligious revelation and of the civil law, is in the faculties 
and desires that so often pull diverse ways in our own 
minds ; and never man lived more aware than was the 
Master of Christians how vast is the work of this rec- 
onciliation within. His fine feelings, both in and out 
of the Church, have been extolled at the expense of his 
understanding, because, in order to be understood, he 
was obliged to use the language, with some of its erro- 
neous implications, of his country and his time. There 
may have been defects in his theory, or mistakes in his 
philosophy, of the universe. Has the sphinx spoken to 
us so that we construe the riddle surely aright? His 
answers are the best rendered yet ; and they show 
that the ideas in his head were as lofty as the Divine 
love was deep in his heart. But of all traits in his dis- 
ciples sincerity is the first. John Ruskin sa3's that " the 
oath of a thief or street-walker is in the eye of God 
as sinless as a hawk's cry or a gnat's murmur, com- 
pared with that of the responses in the church-service 
of the usurer and adulterer." If by civil or ecclesias- 
tical politics be meant a form, made empty, mechanical, 
and hypocritical in order to be catholic and include 
all persons, every sacred name is blasphemed and 
profaned. The Christian general in command of the 



POLITICS. 291 

forces in the Pine-tree State, who, being a soldier, 
did not draw but sheathed the sword, a warrior who 
was a reconciler, a man of battle who kept the peace, 
and a hero who stood in the breach between a com- 
monwealth and anarchy, declining to be superseded 
and relieved of his charge by a pretending chief-magis- 
trate, whose authority had no warrant of constitution 
and law, is worthy of the highest trust any people 
could bestow. 



292 PRmciPLEs. 



XI. 

PLAY. 

THERE is a mental state in which motion and rest 
are the same, as an eagle at once floats on and 
flies through the sky, buoyed up while it ascends. It is 
absence of obstruction before the presence of uncon- 
scious strength. The sport of children is an escape 
from them of that energy which is painful if confined. 
"When David tells Joab to " play the men" against the 
Syrians and Ammonites, what does he mean but that 
men fighting for home and native land may so lay all 
private will on the altar, and be so kindled with courage 
from its live coals, that even their dreadful deeds are 
sportive and inspired. Play is force without effort, as 
in an engine or fountain. Men work at the grindstone 
or pump ; but the musician plays on an instrument if, 
while he addresses himself to his performance, all ob- 
stacles vanish, and the theme performs itself. Just in 
proportion as the artist works he is weak, and his ex- 
hibition is " a labored aflTair." Beasts and birds play. 
It is play for a horse to slip his halter, to run from his 
stall, and as he capers and careers over the ground to 
revert from the bondage of his harness to the infancy 
of his race. The kitten plays with its tail, and its 
mother with the mouse ; and kids and calves have their 
social gambols and games. In what waltzes or round 



PLAY. 293 

dances, making a ballroom of the atmosphere, the sum- 
mer insects whirl ! With what unmistakable courtesy 
the swallows ) like partners, meet or take their leave ! 
Even fishes toil and travail little for subsistence. They 
have much transport with their fins. In human beings, 
while virtue exerts itself, grace plays. What is the 
leaping of the fish, in uncontainable exultation, out 
of the water but the beginning and figure of the spirit's 
soaring into heaven ? 

We speak of God's works ; but the self-representing 
Will into which Schopenhauer would reduce the world's 
perpetual push must be so successful in accomplish- 
ment as to be unconscious of attempt. God wins no 
victor}', for he has no foe. Do we play with the cue on 
the billiard-table? What but eas}' play is his tossing 
of enormous balls in ethereal air? 

Pla}' is plenty of resource, be it spent in the smooth 
wards of a lock, the endless somersaults with puffs of 
pleasure of the porpoises, or of the whales, who throw 
in the spouting as an elegance of the profession as they 
come to the surface to breathe. These creatures say that 
bare subsistence is not enough without a vital overplus 
for merriment and fun. It is a play of the wild waves 
themselves which the poet sings. In all mechanism the 
object is fit movement without rub or noise, as the grass 
grows, and the air clasps us, and the waters ebb and 
flow. The wood is shaven, the iron and steel filed, 
and the strap drawn to suit the grooving in the wheel. 
But our art goes to Nature to school. We copy her 
centres of motion in the jewelled pivots of a watch, of 
the play of whose works we speak ; and the soul must 
be automatic or self-moved before morality is complete. 



294 PEINCIPLES. 

Paul's mission was to deliver his countrymen from "the 
works of the law." Ceremonial law we say in our 
gloss, 3'et it was a law into whose obedience their con- 
science went as much as ours does into the actions and 
customs that discharge our ethical heat. But grace 
surpasses all painstaking. It cannot be put aside or 
abandon itself. "For his bounty it had no winter in 
it ; " and the sons of God are manifest in a goodness 
that abounds. " Oil is in their vessels with their 
lamps." Heaven above is not labor, but pla}^ We 
figure the angels in choirs and with their ' ' chorus on 
high." 

What is love but the heart's pla}'? If 3'ou find it 
hard work to love us, we pray 3'ou not to love us at 
all ! It is enough to have a force-pump in the house, 
but feeling finds its own level, and must be under no 
restraint. It is the pressure itself ! We say ironically 
of one who is obliged to make much preparation for 
any occasion that he is ' ' getting up the steam ; " but 
love is eloquence. What but the magnet and steel and 
needle to the pole are our favorite illustrations of friend- 
ship that is real and sincere ? Lovers fl}^ to each other's 
embrace. The benevolent man is nourished by others' 
needs. If the destitute did not ask, charit}^ would die. 
Hunger and nakedness and all poverty and ignorance 
are its field, without which it were smothered in its own 
excess. A locomotive does not object to the track, and 
good affections are alwa3's in running order. Love is 
the pa3ing and receiving teller alike in God's bank. In 
some ministrj' at large is the benefactor or beneficiary to 
be congratulated most? As the courser is breathed on 
the course, so goodness runs and is not weary ; and the 



PLAY. 295 

orthodox doctrine is true, that there is no merit in the 
best works. 

But is not life full of hard tasks, as Harriet Marti- 
neau's childish maxim was, — "Duty first and pleasure 
afterwards " ? We may begin with application and pro- 
ceed to agony ; but we end in a composure, which is rap- 
ture too. It is like the process of filling a balloon which 
swap's awkwardl}' and without balance on the ground, 
not knowing for a time what to do. But it rights itself 
more and more as the finer element which is to be its 
sta}^ fills its hungry interior and presses out its silken 
sides. At length it tugs at and spurns the cords that 
confine it to the earth, waiting onl}' till the}' be cut 
for it to soar, and become part of the airj' current on 
which it is borne. Duty is the wish of the soul raised 
to the highest power, and rushing to Y>ay what it owes, 
as the honest man rejoices less in making mone}^ than 
in paying his debts. Nor is it trivial obligations alone 
that mostl}' thrill and recreate the mind. A tragedy-, 
"Othello" or "Macbeth," on the stage is still a pla3\ 
So are dire encounters in real life. When, in Nelson's 
phrase, England expected ever}' man to do his dut}', at 
Aboukir or Trafalgar, was it not beautj' too to every 
man? When the Federals and Confederates exchanged 
rations, fruit, or tobacco jocosely across the lines, or 
when at the gates of Paris a Uhlan and a French sol- 
dier smiled on each other, after the deadl}- thrust and 
grip, just before the}' both died, were they not quite aware 
it was not hatred, but a game? At the playhouse our 
great President met his doom, but in what a theatre he 
had been chief character outside ! He would have been 
capable of a good-natured jest at his assassin's expense, 



296 PRINCIPLES. 

like Thomas More when he told the executioner to spare 
his long beard, as " that at least had committed no 
treason." John Brown, being dragged in the cart to 
the gallows, amazes and amuses the driver by light- 
hearted talk on the fine scenery in whose neighborhood 
they passed. Of what was this modern Judas Macca- 
baeus with his Hebrew zeal thinking, as the wheels of the 
van that held him rattled on ? But how joyfully he had 
acted his part at the difficult post where, by a power 
that would not be gainsaid, he had been set ; while a 
solace from a horizon more glorious than the Virginia 
hills beamed on his believing soul, so shortly by the 
great Manager to be released from its blessed role, and 
refreshed. In him body and mind had constitution- 
ally a certain noble sway and elastic tread, and he had 
well and often in his heart's chambers practised and 
rehearsed what he did such justice to in the eyes 
of mankind. It was a serious sort of play. It is 
not the grim Puritan but the good-natured man that 
is most in earnest. The true hero is less grave than 
gay. He is Bayard and Sidney rather than John Bal- 
four of Burle3\ When on the country-road a sweet 
fragrance of flowers is wafted from the 3'ard, we feel 
that generosity with love of beaut}^ not selfish moiling, 
lives in the house ; and the atmosphere of greatness is 
always sweet. 

Jesus himself was an actor in the same sense. A 
modern school of theologians speaks of the crucifixion 
not as a vicarious bloody atonement, but a dramatic ex- 
hibition of God's horror of sin ; and the ancient Docetae 
thought Calvary was but a show of suffering. There 
was no real expiring at Golgotha. The deathless soul 



PLAY. 297 

enacted the whole scene, and made room for all the 
dramatis personce in one breast. Christ must have 
looked ont of his murderers' e3'es on himself when he 
based his prayer for their pardon on their ignorance of 
their deed. He ivas the disciple whom he made a son 
to his own mother instead of himself ; and he was the 
mother to whom he knew what it was to give a son. 
Yet he left not his own station on the nails that held 
him against the tree. He insisted on tasting the last 
drop of penal anguish from banded Judaea and Rome. 
He ref\ised to deaden one pang with the wonted compli- 
ment of vinegar and myrrh. 

Most scholars and critics now agree that the temp- 
tation recorded b}" the Evangelist was no outward fact 
arranged by a visible devil with the Lord, but that it 
transpired in his own bosom, as ambition, appetite, os- 
tentation, spread the lures which he instantly declined to 
follow, and the snares in which he could not be caught. 
An imaginative mind of such a poet of God as Christ 
was would lay out the various careers he might have 
the option to pursue. But the stones to be made bread, 
the pinnacle of the temple, and the exceeding high 
mountain displaying all the glories of the world, were 
but vision and magnificent dream of real heights and 
possible degradations, not alone of fanc^^ but of the 
intellectual faculty and moral sense, for a picture to 
hang for ever in the galleries of time ! 

When the natural elements are at their best, and 
health is in every dew-drop, and the morning breeze 
moves gently with the shining of the unclouded sun, 
then there is a sparkle on the sea. So there is hilar- 
ity in the man who is inwardly well. He is like the 



298 PRINCIPLES. 

sentinel I heard pace on a summer night in Santa Cruz, 
and sing, "All is serene." When the dwelling is in 
order, the children can play ! Our affections will pla}', 
if the}^ exist. The bounty is not acceptable which we 
have to hoist up or hesitate about. As the experts 
making the best time in the regatta do not spurt at the 
oar, but with even breath from the rowlocks pull, in 
their long and almost noiseless sweep, so the race of 
goodness is not turbulent and fretful, but constant and 
smooth ; and our eulogy on any marvellous feat is that 
it was done in sport, — there being more where that 
came from, and plent}" to spare ! It was after Delilah 
had robbed Samson of his hair that the Philistines seized 
and brought him to Gaza, and put out his eyes, and 
made him sweat and grind. Abilitj^ is silent, and de- 
bility is loud. 

Genius or character has its programme long ago 
made out in the skies. When a great performer pro- 
fessed he was unhappy, with only moments of bliss and 
months of torture, from something beside his inspira- 
tion his woe must have come ! While we do the bidding 
and run on the errand we are glad, and nothing can be 
out of joint. Before the breath of God, if it come, I 
am a projectile like a cannon-ball, which does the exe- 
cution and does not question the aim. Hence the 
stamp of necessit}" in the result. "As well," says 
Coleridge, "push a brick out of the solid cemented 
wall as a word out of Shakspeare's line ; " and a mor- 
tar more firm holds edges finer hewn in ever}^ true life. 
Its most dismal passages are like pits the da}^ is let 
into, or graves where resurrections have taken place. 

There are shadows on the playground, and we may 



PLAY. 299 

as well object to the landscape as to the just report of 
it the artist makes. How can he who is too claint}' to 
listen to the tale endure to surve}' the actual human 
scene? If to " purifj' by pit}- and terror" be the busi- 
ness of the muse, then by avoiding the process we 
shall miss the result. We must have the labor and 
the pain that we may have the play. We would cheer- 
fully make room, though it should take the whole 
planet, for a patient endurance or an heroic deed. 
We are in an arm}' ; and what is righteousness but not 
breaking the ranks? As there is a prelude for the 
orchestra and a rehearsal for the stage, so work must 
prepare always for play. How the fingers of the pia- 
nist fl}' over the ke3s, and are no longer aware of the 
motions and intervals which at first were compassed 
with such toil and drill ! What dexterity in his compo- 
sition the experienced type-setter display's, and in what 
artless, charming order the accomplished orator's sen- 
tences flow ! B}' steps of equal care and diligence 
must we mount to the Zion where the singers and 
players are. As 3'ou behold the ocean rolling afar from 
the summit of the White Hills or the Alps, so the as- 
cent of principles is the condition of spiritual sight. 
Michael Angelo toiled slowly when he began ; but the 
marble chips flew from his chisel at last. 

Fine manners also are a certain play or overplus of 
the heart, as a feast is more than enough to eat and 
drink. What but the unfokhng of an at first rude and 
savage deportment once in the Greek language turned 
the sense of a word from stranger to guest ? Nature 
is alwaj's teaching the lesson of this "touch beyond" 
and something over. So to every visitor we give our 



800 PRINCIPLES. 

best, withholding it in his favor from the members of 
our household and from ourselves. We make whoever 
comes welcome to the largest room, to the most savory 
morsel, the window of best prospect, the most delightful 
drive, and complete entertainment every way. Our en- 
jo3'ment reaches its highest pitch in his. Barbarism 
formerl}' was a rough repulse or a bloody assault, as of 
naked Otaheitans or murderous Mala3^s. It now con- 
sists in a stinted hospitality or a cool and scant}^ salute ! 
From the Divine overflow we get our lesson. God's 
work ever3-where rises or runs into play. The winds 
whistle and the waves dance. In the Greek poetry the 
billows have a multitudinous laugh. There is no strain 
or falling short in any natural supply, but exulting suffi- 
ciency, more oxygen than we can breathe, and more 
water than we need to quench our thirst. The sun is 
no lantern or hand-lamp, just enabling us to find our 
way and get about. We cannot use a tithe of his rays, 
while the Word of the Lord is a lamp to our feet. 

Who says that Nature is sad? Only an echo is her 
minor key ! We give her the pitch of the tune. If 
she sings a dirge, it is her courtesy to our grief, and no 
son'ow brooding in her own breast. A band of music 
can make the same instruments ga}' or doleful. If the 
refrain in Nature be a moan, it is onl}- that our mis- 
fortune or bereavement takes hold of her pipes and 
strings. She can and would be fair and merry with 
us in her great picture-gallery and concert-hall ! Her 
charm, in Wordsworth's apostrophe, robs conscience 
of its sting, — 

"Flowers laugh before thee on their beds. 
And fragrance in thy footing treads." 



PLAY. 301 

Every blo*ssom is her superfliiit}-. With what odors she 
greets us as we walk in the fields and the woods ! The 
crowded petals of cultivation cannot vie with the single 
row in the wild rose, so lithe and sweet. Ever^^ fruit- 
tree is a basket of flow^ers first. How the breeze 
waves the gi'ass and the grain to nod, and in sham fight 
brandish their spears ! Why has the wheat, beside the 
kernel, its green and yellow bud and bloom? Where- 
fore the spindling and the silk tassels of the corn, but 
for some such reason as we have tents and arbors and 
awnings and carpets to give our politeness full course ? 
The harvest smiles on us before it feeds. There is a 
hum and murmur of promise in the air from the grow- 
ing crops. Whoever noticed the sailing of clouds in 
the sk}' and the cloud-shadows over the forest-edges 
and along the mountain-sides, or the scores of diverse 
crystals in the snow, but felt the Divine solicitude that 
we might be pleased? Flowering introduces and is 
essential to fruit. The potato, that lowly esculent, 
would not thrive for us under ground but that it blos- 
soms above. The surly curmudgeons and conceited 
wiseacres fall below this ground-apple, as it is called 
by the French. The landscape laughs at the dignity 
with which some proud citizen marches b}', his eye 
fixed on a distant planet, and having to gyrate like a 
telescope to bring into its focus objects so small and 
near as his fellow-men. What an ic}' response of far- 
off recognition he sends to 3-our cordial good-morning 
and to your half-wasted bow ! But fine manners pla}^ 
freel}' as the rippling folds of a streamer from its staff. 
You are not polite if you try to be so ! Genuine 
courtesy is the escape of 3'our love in every trifle, like 



302 PRINCIPLES. 

a whiff of the wind, the glitter of the deep or of drops 
of dew, the aroma that fills the chamber from a hidden 
source. There are persons whose simple and uncon- 
scious wa3's la}' on us a strange spell. The atmosphere 
of others repels. When I lamented the mendacity of 
a certain person, the reply was, "It is not the lying 
that troubles me, for that I can defend myself against ; 
it is the other disagreeable qualities." The manners of 
some people are a centrifugal force. Every material 
body exudes its own ' ' airs from heaven or blasts from 
hell." Personal attraction or revulsion is a mj'ster}' and 
foreordination before the founding of the world. 

" Say wlien in lapsed ages I knew thee of old ; 
And what was the service for which I was sold 1 " 

Happy is it if any two persons can keep their footing 
together, and be a binary star. 

Delicate sensibilit}^ is the condition of perfect man- 
ners. Edison's apparatus feels the star before it is 
seen ; and a quiver of feeling gauges whatever person- 
alit}' sweeps into our field of view. In naval architec- 
ture the safety is in a structure most quick and buoyant 
to mind the swell of the sea. The Great Eastern is 
demoralized like a cast horse in the stable, and thrown 
on her beam-ends. She would not " stoop to conquer," 
and the waves, whose stoop no quadrant or chart can 
reckon, hustled her into the trough of the sea ; while 
the little Gloucester dory and the Nautilus skiff from 
New York cross the Atlantic, defj'ing whirlwind and 
storm. The deference to each other of persons as they 
pass, as well as careering ships, is, however, no abject 
submission, but reference to the centre of aU. 



PLAY. 803 

We do with ease what we do with our whole heart. 
That is feeble which just rubs and goes. There must 
be no wax if the wheel in its box or over its pivot is to 
be swift. Devotion at its acme rises and leaps and 
sings as in Miriam with her timbrel at the Red Sea, and 
in David before the ark, in Madame Gu3'on whose feet, 
when the passion of piety is on her, can scarce touch 
the ground, and in all the levitation and ardor of the 
saints, which signifies more than gravit}^ and the long 
or sour face. How the hard prayer, more than the 
dull sermon, afflicts a congregation, and is like the 
asses' chewing of thistles, which we are impatient to 
stop ! Onl}' when the Godhead is an element which 
the minister bears us into, as a horse runs, the bird 
flies, or a fish swims, can his fellow- worshippers be raised 
or led. But the public act of prayer is often a diflScult 
scramble in the Congregational order, as it is with the 
Episcopal a perfunctor}' form. A liturgy is convenient 
where the spirit does not move ! But it contains not 
only the mournful confession which the " miserable sin- 
ners " make ; it admits no path to heaven but the old 
ancestral road with all its unmended ruts. If the re- 
sponses have no life in them, then the decorous phrases 
of the Common Prayer are shamed b}' the swarm and 
hum of the Florida negroes over their pine sanctuary 
floor. 

No instituted religion can furnish all the pla}' we 
need. Poet, storj'-teller, artist, and actor are auxil- 
iaries for the unfinished business of the priest ; and 
there is in their truth to their several callings as much 
religion as in an}' ritual he can rehearse. It was a 
clerg3'man, rich in culture as broad in love, and de- 



304 PRINCIPLES. 

voted to the American nation when life and liberty were 
the stakes for which with ball and bayonet it played, 
who first among us effectuaUy confronted superstitious 
prejudice with a masterl}^ defence of the stage. Is the 
church sacred and the theatre profane? The pulpit- 
curtain in itself is no holier than that which hangs at 
the proscenium, and the servant ministering at the altar 
may be less pure than the impersonator of any charac- 
ter in Shakspeare or Dumas. We have heard poorer 
sermons than from Rip Van Winkle or Lord Dundreary. 
I honored Charlotte Cushman and Horace Bushnell 
alike, as in their common Master's service they em- 
ployed all their time and strength. There are no more 
sticks in the stock company than in the desk. The 
clerical profession has been hurt b}' nothing more than 
by assumptions of superior sanctity or peculiar author- 
ity. An opera has been called a play worked ; and 
there is as much working and as little of flying wing 
often in the parish incumbent as in the wire-puller that 
sets up his travelling booth. 

It is sometimes said of persons of wit and humor 
that we know not whether the^^ are in earnest or jest. 
But if a matter is touching us to the quick, these merry 
men may mean to protect us with the turn the}'^ give ! 
As a soft skin covers the nerves, wiiich would suffer if 
exposed, so deeper sensibilities find in superficial ban- 
ter a shield and sheath. Is love always downright and 
blunt? Rather it waits and goes round, and gently 
breaks or remotel}' hints any message of pain. Was 
not the prophet Nathan a player when he made a fable 
of David's sin? Were not all Christ's parables and 
miracles plays to represent eternal laws? The square 



PLAY. 305 

and bold putting of things which j'oii boast of is no 
more true to human nature than it is kind ; and the 
annals of philanthropy abound in precious specimens 
of injustice and hate. Into this internecine strife of 
reform comes the humane mediator, like the middle-man 
in Goethe's tale of " Elective Affinities," to parry the 
edge of the sword ; and his fencing is play. So, while 
war thundered, Abraham Lincoln played. 

There is nothing profounder than that play of imagi- 
nation b}^ which we translate ourself into another, and 
transmute another into ourself. Yet such realization 
differs from the histrionic art. The purpose of that 
art is to reproduce a character in outward appearance, 
to please spectators with the show. It is enough for 
the actor if he master the signs and use the language 
by which the soul of Hamlet or Juliet is put forth as an 
image is projected on a screen. But by assimilation we 
become the one we devotedly follow and admire. So 
we " put on Jesus Christ." The actor can put his mask 
on or off, but the moral transfiguration lasts. It is the 
vocation of the actor to entertain b}^ pleasantly filling 
the hour. We have our pastime of private theatricals 
and charades. But in the real graft or appropriation of 
noble traits to the wild olive-tree of our nature we hope 
for eternal growth. When theological candidates are 
exhorted, as they get into the pulpit, if they do not feel 
their subject, nevertheless " to act as if they felt it, in 
order to carry their congregation," a rule is laid down 
whose practice would abolish the distinction between 
the pulpit and the stage, and turn serious pleading with 
sinners into mimicry and a mock. No orthodox}^ but 
must be demoralized b^^ the following of such advice. 

20 



306 PRINCIPLES. 

Imagination is so potent that we must regulate if we 
adopt it as a guide. Ph3^sicians confess how much it 
has to do with the heahng of disease. It puts virtue 
into remedies and applications too slight and neutral 
properly to have an}" efficacy of themselves. It invests 
outward nature with charms not her own. In human 
nature its influence is more marked. Is. it simply a 
person, or somewhat an imagination of one, that I 
love, and that another loves in me? Does our affec- 
tion lie in a mutual astonisliment that of what each 
thinks so little in himself the other thinks so much? 
If love wax cold with such speculation, let us not do 
our great Partner the wrong to be forlorn, nor cease to 
have Nature for our plaj'^mate and bride ! On her ex- 
quisite complexion and shapel}^ form, let us still fix our 
eye ! She will restore us to mutual faith. 

Truth is positive. It is the essence, not the attri- 
bute, of God ; and if we construe Christianity as letting 
it slip, Hindu and Javanese and Tonga ethics will still 
remain to report, through our linguistic scholars, that 
" there is nothing without truth." The ingenious writer, 
Alphonse Karr, sa3"S, " God's goodness to the poor ap- 
pears in the profusion of wayside flowers, which are 
of the color of the sky." As many are of the color of 
the sun! " Graj^ and melancholy waste," in Bryant's 
phrase, save for the sepulchral design in his poem, does 
not quite describe the sea, which has man}^ a cheerful 
chameleon hue. In communion with that beauty which 
the universe is, I cannot be desolate, however forsaken 
and betraj'ed. Chaos is kosmos to the discerning eye. 
I am glad even among the ragged rocks, split with 
myriad fine wedges of the frost, eaten into by the 



PLAY. 307 

toothed waves, and half beaten down to a sand}" floor, 
with long deep clefts strung with boulders as beads, 
through whose spaces the upper firmament shines. 
Pla}' on, O elements, and please mj' posterity; as well 
as ye do me ! 

How exquisite, too, the live adjustment is ! My 
shepherd dog, a two months' pupp}^ P^^y^ with the 
kittens, who play together, each small pussy standing 
her ground against the big shagg}' lout. But he has 
learned, from many a past encounter of wits and of 
paws with claws, the relative sharpness of the un- 
sheathed weapons, as also of the respective teeth, and 
just how far it is safe in his onset to go. He growls, 
and pretends to be very fierce, but is quite prudent 
withal, and does not propose to lay his handsome muz- 
zle open to the mischance of an}' sudden and perhaps 
bloodj' blow, off'ered to him so frequently and like a 
flash. What a duel, as if to match that with a fencing- 
master, it is ! How the interest of the spectacle comes 
from the likeness to what the}' see of those who look, 
before whom as spectators the little beasts perform, 
acting themselves, covertly, the part of spectators too ! 
"When in the game temper comes in, and bites and 
cufls are exchanged, how the parallels of this resem- 
blance still hold ! 

There is a foreign metaphysic, according to which 
pain is the substance and pleasure but the outside of 
life, as the popular theology makes sin the kernel and 
virtue only the hull. But, while the creatures are at 
play, the interest proceeds from the deeps ; and when 
they growl and scratch and hook in a barnyard or on a 
battle-field, they are on the surface more. A thunder- 



308 PRINCIPLES. 

storm is but a passing scream of the electric force ; and 
it is said tlie liglitning-rod draws the perilous stuff from 
the air above our house in silence, and all the time. 
Let us put up moral conductors, and not fear the darker 
clouds. 

In proportion as things rub, they do not play ; and 
the object is to overcome the friction at every point. 
What a loss of power was in the old drag on which 
heavy weights were hauled over the ston}^ ground ! 
What a gain of tractile force is in the wrought-iron 
wheels that glide with freight of uncounted tons along 
the polished steel rails ! There is a shock at the least 
obstacle, as when by the ring-bolt the flapping sail or 
the wanton steer is brought up. But the wheels will 
not bite the over-smooth rails ; and there must be some 
friction to get along in human life. Yet to diminish it 
at every point as much as we ma}^ should be our aim, 
pouring oil on the waves and into the iron boxes and 
joints ; for the spokes kindle which are not lubricated. 
What meant the anointing of prophets and kings, but 
to soften the collisions of men's savage passions, cool 
their rages, and keep their hatreds from flaming out? 
What were the oil ' ' that ran down Aaron's beard to the 
skirts of his garments " but a childish display and fool- 
ish expenditure, save for this significance in the temple 
and the realm? Jesus was anointed " Prince of Peace'* 
for what but that he might reconcile the alienated, 
make friends of foes, and still worse storms than went 
down, it is said, on the Sea of Galilee at his word? 
How to get speed with safety, and how to check ad- 
vance when peril is in the way, is the object of the 
band and rein and linch-pin and air-brake ; and the 



PLAY. 309 

moral devices of wise precepts and good laws contem- 
plate no other end. Religion itself, as an exercise, wiU 
be useless when life becomes perfect as pla3\ The 
propert}^ and office of great men is to promote this con- 
summation, and in their presence how the soul dances 
and sings ! 

Thei-e is a 3'earning in the 3'oungest heart for the 
exercise of S3'mpathy. When I told a little girl of the 
burning of a litter of common pigs, she said she was 
" sorr3^ the3^ were not guinea-pigs, that she might pity 
them more ! " Compassion is such a luxury that it is 
a question if we could be altogether happy were every 
subject of commiseration removed. 

But in the game of life let us observe the rules, be 
it mone3', position, place, and repute we pla3' for, or 
truth, honor, human welfare, and the glory of God. 
According to our direction, ill blood or blessing shall be 
the conclusion ; and onl3' if the purpose be noble shall 
the pla3' itself last. It will break up in confusion if 
it be carried on with selfishness. We must tug not a 
little to get through ! Few are so accomplished as not 
to need on their work something like the fine emery or 
grating sand, if not the rasp. The axe ground into 
sharpness figures the disappointment and opposition 
which our faculties and affections must be whet b3^ By 
what firm 3^et exquisite touches the polish is put upon 
gems! God is a jeweller, and "those gems he sets 
most store by he hath oftenest his hands on," and 
will put into that crown which is both ours and his. 
Certain pieces of horn and shell become like glossy 
mirrors onl3' under contact with the human hand ; and 
there is a pressure on us so strong and sensible that 



310 PRINCIPLES. 

we call it the hand of God ! He means all parts of 
our nature to fit, like a choir to an anthem or the kej's 
of a flute to its ventages and stops. No instrument of 
thought or feeling in this parlor of the human breast, 
discourse melodiously as it may, but will get out of or- 
der and require attention sometimes. But by no mortal 
hand can it be altogether restored. The music-master 
whose skill we require is unseen, j^et what creature is 
so read}^ as the Creator to serve? 

If order be the work, beauty is the play of God. It 
is not only " its own excuse for being," but we cannot 
tell how it is. " The beauty of flowering plants," says 
Mr. Darwin, "is useful in attracting insects to fertilize 
and perpetuate them." But the manner or reason of its 
first existence his theory does not explain ; and the 
botanist finds many blossoms, conspicuously beautiful, 
Insects are not drawn to, and which therefore serve no 
such end ; so that the utilitarian philosophy breaks 
down often at the points of its own chosen applica- 
tion, while it utterly fails to account for beauty in 
the inorganic world. The insects themselves, in being 
lured to brilliant forms, share with us in an enjo3^ment 
which we do not understand more than they, thus own- 
ing a common bond. The domesticated animals know, 
as well as do our children, what it is to play. The dog 
has his duties ; but he never comes so close to his mas- 
ter as when they play together. B}^ much referring to 
his superior's gesture and look he becomes partaker of 
human nature, as by that reference which we call prayer 
we become partakers of the Divine. Where we can 
detect her method and follow her uniform step, perhaps 
Nature may be said to work. But she unfolds, under 



PLAY. 311 

the gardener's eye, many sporting varieties, bej'ond what 
he had expected or contrived, and which are peculiarly 
suited to stir admiration b}' their tint and shape. So 
vast and minute, so changeful and surprising, are the 
charms, which no knowledge can dissect or fathom in 
all her realms, we feel that the inmost of her Author is 
revealed in the outmost of her displays, and that our 
communion together and with him is no solemn task or 
formal service, but even that play which is the height 
of our powers, and that pleasure which is joy in the 
Holy Ghost. 



PART II. 
PORTRAITS. 



PART II. 
PORTRAITS. 



I. 

THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 

THAT French philosopher, Fernand Papillon, the 
farthest possible from the biitterfl}' signified by 
his name, in the " Revue de deux Mondes," relates that 
an Englishman having told his . groom to go over the 
way after his friend Shakspeare, the servant inquired 
how he should know him in the crowd ; and the master 
replied, "He alone looks like a man; all the rest are 
animals." Yet, while we worship the poet, we say the 
man has no character. We question as respects the 
greatest name in the classic school, if there were any 
Homer or man}' singers of the Iliad and Odysse}^ ; and 
the supreme romantic English bard does not appear in 
his work, and never had his portrait taken. He effaces 
himself. With a matchless mind he led, so it is said, an 
obscure and profane life, and was a mere master of the 
revels and entertainer at the Blackfriars' Theatre, open 
to Mahomet's reproach from the gods to the merry- 
makers, " Think ye we have made the heaven and earth 
for sport?" Shakspeare was not a genteel, fashionable 



316 POKTRATTS. 

person, not a great leader, a religious reformer, a mili- 
tary captain, an ecclesiastical officer, or a conventional 
saint. 

But we must not ask one man to be all men, — Goethe 
to be a politician, or Shakspeare a courtier, Moses an 
orator, or Lutlier a general in the field. If the pith of 
manhood goes into what one does or says, he pays his 
passage or cumbers not the ground. It is sometimes 
said of a humorist that we cannot tell when he is se- 
rious, as if in aught were more reality than there is in 
wit. Shakspeare was a dramatist ; but ' ' all the world 's 
a stage and the men and women merely players," and 
the end of the creation may prove to be play rather 
than work. What is the universe but God's theatre, in 
which, without jar or grating, ever}^ piece of scenery 
slides ? Despite pain and grief and sin and death, the 
. object is that harmony of perfect play which is prophe- 
sied in every childish game. In his essence Shakspeare 
was a player, as Garrick, perhaps his chief impersona- 
tor, was never so much himself as when enacting some 
part. When he was missed at the inn his friends found 
him in a back-j^ard, throwing a negro boj^ his solitary 
spectator, into convulsions of laughter, as he mocked 
the feathery fuss of a turkey-cock. Shakspeare was no 
notable and forward personage. We imagine him look- 
ing shyl}^ at every thing and through everybody. No 
doubt he, as do all the great, liked obscurit3\ Fenelon 
wished to be unknown, Wesley wanted no monument, 
Moses declined to be an orator. Turner was gruff to bores, 
Agassiz hated interruption, Hawthorne drew up the lad- 
der into his study, and Jesus hid himself. Emerson, 
when the callers came, missed his mighty gods. Hunt 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 317 

cared much for Michael Angelo and little for connoisseurs, 
and Whittier would prefer the good opinion of his neigh- 
bors to the fame of Shakspeare ! Father Taylor goes 
alone, and mutters to himself because he says he " likes 
to talk to a sensible man ; " and to a fine compliment Car- 
lyle saj's, " Pshaw, I don't believe a word of it ! " Web- 
ster had fits of silence which it was dangerous to disturb. 
Charles Lowell so enjoyed his devotions that he would 
rather have been the author of Isaac Watts's h3^mns than 
of Shakspeare's plays. All high character or genius is 
on condition of heeding the law of incubation on the 
finer than roc's egg of thought. The soul may have 
been a bird once, it so loves still to brood ! It is not 
fond of interviewers and reporters. So, to be obscure 
and profane, in some sense, was Shakspeare's note of 
worth. 

It was glorious to run from the pursuit of glory ; all 
the better if Essex and Leicester would not speak save 
in condescension to the pla3'wright as the}^ passed. He 
kept low compan}', as the old scribes and Pharisees said 
a certain other person did, and as Socrates consorted 
with disreputable persons earlier still. Even sinners 
are better society than the self-righteous. Must not one 
get clear of his own shadow and make himself of no 
reputation in order that he may see clearly? Benjamin 
Paul Blood sa3"s we learn more as we come to after 
anaesthesia, than from Fichte or Hegel. But Shakspeare 
dwelt in the land of surprise, and was coming to all the 
time. Genius is the child of wonder, and able to en- 
visage all being in its own. It takes a low position 
and gazes from a covert. The artist does not stare at 
things or at people, but catches them with half- shut 



318 PORTRAITS. 

eye at a sidelong look. No stealth is like his ! Noth- 
ing is worth observing which he does not behold. Our 
thoughts do not come to the front and present them- 
selves in full dress, but sidle in and startle us with their 
unexpected salute and sudden good-morning. The 
thinker is not a bold htinter, but lurks modestly for his 
game. 

We search in vain for any man's personality in his 
notoriety. We must come at Shakspeare's in his pen, 
remembering that it is a false distinction which would 
certify more significance in a deed than in a word. But, 
as we treat of his representations, the puritanic criticism 
recurs in another form, that he slights the lowly and 
flatters the chivalrous and high-born, holding in honor no 
such characters as some that Goethe chooses, especially 
of women from common life. We must not ask Shak- 
speare to be a modern four centuries after his death ; but 
that he was less republican than Goethe would be hard 
to prove, either from his conduct or his lines. The 
German, in the little court of Saxe-Weimar, deferred to 
potentate and prince ; while a fine ear detects a false 
poetic ring in the compliment to Queen Elizabeth, hint- 
ing that it did not come from Shakspeare's creative 
hand. 

It is a more serious charge that he was indiflferent to 
moral distinctions, and with impartial pencil drew the 
sinner and saint. Is God indiflferent, with his equal sun 
and rain over all? Did Shakspeare care for all ahke? 
Would you know what he loved or hated, mark what he 
makes you love or hate ! What was he ? What his 
pages make you wish to be ! Do you feel nobler, read- 
ing him? He was noble, too. He weighs what his 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 319 

works weigh. How many pulpits would it take for an 
equivalent? Could we not spare all the churches and 
cathedrals of England, and sink the sea-girt isle rather 
than that one book ? The little booth he admits us into 
becomes a world-wide audience-chamber with a solemn 
desk. The Globe Theatre expands into the dimensions 
of the globe. What does human nature, not any com- 
mentator, think of him? Reverentlj^ I say it, he too 
" draws all men to him," sitting, as our poet has it, 

" Lone as the blessed Jew." 

That touch of nature which, he says, " makes the whole 
world kin," he gives ; and the enthusiasts for him are 
on the continent of Europe as much as on his native 
soil. Pastime does he give? Sober study too, as he 
condenses the drift of history on his page ! He fur- 
nishes texts for new treatises in art, histor}', nature, and 
natural history, medicine, and law. Saj's a doctor to me, 
' ' Shakspeare guessed before Harvey the circulation of 
the blood ; he described better than an}' later observer 
the phenomena of sleep-walking ; and he enumerates the 
offices of sleep with a perfection which the most recent 
ph3'siologist cannot excel." When he calls it " chief 
nourisher in life's feast," he states the scientific fact ! 
A volume has been written b}' a Canada professor to 
prove that his Caliban is Darwin's missing link. Dick- 
ens's Quilp, or Victor Hugo's Quasimodo, is perhaps not 
quite in nature ; but Caliban, an odder creature, is im- 
mortal, a species by himself, and cannot be left out. 

Had he no moral judgment because he pronounces 
no sentence from the bench ? Be sure that your opin- 
ion of lago, Othello, Shylock, and Richard HI. was his. 



320 PORTRAITS. 

Plain men from the country, on their first visit to the 
theatre, want to interfere and choke some of those wor- 
thies on the spot and before the time. Did Sliakspeare 
make Timon the misanthrope as weighty in his approval 
as Alcibiades, or as the Merchant in his scale? He 
loves all indeed, like the Maker, and condemns only as 
he describes ! Like a detective he photographs the 
murderer and the thief. "Your portrait," one said to 
an artist, " is that of a fox." " The sitter is one," he 
replied. Does Shakspeare rate villain and noble alike, 
because he paints them with like care? Only as the 
naturalist so values bat and beetle, fish and scorpion, 
mastodon and man, because all the skeletons are in his 
museum, or in his alcoholic bottles creatures fierce and 
gentle are at peace. Shakspeare was not portrait-painter 
for Her Majesty, but for the human race. The sun may 
err, but not his pencil ; and you may as well criticise the 
landscape as his scenes. He keeps himself out ; no atom 
of his individuality intrudes into his pictures. All his 
lendings and limitations are dropped, like a traveller's 
cloak in the entry or a snake's skin in the woods. It has 
been said, Goethe is the more perfect artist and Shak- 
speare the greater nature. But what is art, if not the 
power to delineate others and omit one's self? 

Who was Shakspeare ? But small part of him is in 
the parish-register or tomb, that tells us he reached his 
fifty-third year, or states the parentage of what so ex- 
ceeded that by which it was begotten or born. The 
physical geography, ssljs Mr. Buckle, largely determines 
the character of the population ; but in this case what 
has Stratford-upon-Avon to say ? Can we find the man 
we are after in the supposed boyish poacher on his 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 321 

neighbor's estate, in the landholder's prosecution of a 
debtor for corn, in the lad flinging jests from the turn- 
stile at the passers-b}- , in the testator's bequest of his 
second best bed to the wife who may have legall}- in- 
herited the best, or in the blessing and ban on the 
gravestone, — as if after he had done with them he really 
could care for his bones ? We know at least what he was 
not. He was no court-clown, such as kings once kept. 
Never hved one to whom the world was less a jest ! As 
grotesque as nature, so is he. The Psalmist sa3^s, God 
laughs at certain persons and has them in derision ; and 
our poet catches from the Divine countenance the trick 
of that smiling ; but no more than the Arab prophet him- 
self is he exposed to the curse of the Koran on any tri- 
fling unfit to the time. For if heaven and earth were 
not made for sport, no more were those tragedies, with 
whose characters the muse must have travailed in pain, 
before they stalked forth on the planetar}^ stage which 
they will never quit. What a collection and what a 
preservation it is ! This amber holds the &y, and it 
holds the world. The mortal millions pass. Kings and 
princes are dead. Their forms are gone, be3'ond art 
of Egypt to embalm ; while, out of the realm of imagi- 
nation and rock of ages, who is this that quarries Ham- 
let and Lear and Imogen and Desdemona, — ideal shapes 
to abide be^'ond any actual, and shadows which no man 
ever saw in this buckram we wear of flesh and blood, 
yet of more than human substance to walk over our 
ashes, to survive our frame, to mock this short-lived set 
of egoists that we are, and challenge for themselves 
alike longevity- and perpetual youth? Whence such 
creations ? From no buffoonery and no levitj' of a privi- 

21 



322 POETRAITS. 

leged joker commissioned to supply the boards with 
mirth, but^ out of a gravity like that which made the 
satellites and the sun. 

Who was Shakspeare ? No materialist at least. The 
Sadducees can make nothing of him. It were cutting 
matter very fine to whittle it into all the products his 
brain swarmed with, and to find room in its convolutions 
for what has flown out of that hive to hover and hum in 
all the gardens and over all the field-flowers of the 
world. You blame this plenipotentiary for being a 
good fellow ? But does the greatest earnestness frown 
or weep ? No, it burns and is benign to bless ! Was 
all the levity with Thackeray and Dickens, and did the 
seriousness belong but to John Calvin and John Knox? 

" There are more things in heaven and earth 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

This author gets himself quoted more than are those 
theologic polemics now, even on themes supramun- 
dane. The " majesty of buried Denmark" convinces 
us of a "bourn" be3^ond, whether travellers return 
from it or not. The ghosts in the sittings and circles 
all vanish ; Shakspeare's remain. Of what tough mate- 
rial are the}^ made ? The witches, withered and wild 
in their attire on the blasted heath, the fairies. Puck 
and Oberon with their tricks}^ wa^'s, like Goethe's moth- 
ers and Milton's angels, persuade us of other orders 
of being than go to market, or crowd on 'Change, 
or dispute in the legislature, or clasp gold crucifixes, or 
recite from illuminated missals, count beads, and bow 
with velvet propriety in church. 

Who was Shakspeare ? A greater architect than Inigo 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 323 

Jones or Christopher Wren ! Nobody has taken up the 
line between matter and spirit with hand so deft. Where- 
fore do his delegates from the invisible stand and keep 
their footing as denizens here below, but for somewhat 
perdurable in the stuff they, like dreams, are made of? 
What credit would there be for his association of the 
seraph and worm, save from a constitutional suspicion 
that the soaring seraph as well as the grovelling worm 
exists ? Without this substratum of innate belief, the 
spectres were ludicrous assumptions, blown light as 
down instead of being cut in some divine cameo, till 
these ethereal forms, which the hand can pass through, 
but the eye not close upon, become adamant to the 
mind. How much literar}- work perishes as an extinct 
species, while Shakspeare's is the fittest and survives ! 

The puritanic conscience cross-questions him on the 
point of piety, and doubts if he were a religious man ; 
and if, to be a sample of devoutness, one must be morose 
and sour, with longitude and no latitude of face, then 
this genial creature and creator cannot meet any eccle- 
siastical committee with his claims, and with the oval 
features that had nothing in them lean. But supreme 
genius is praj'er and answer to pra3'er in Homer, in 
Dante, in Milton, and Goethe too, who but for a pious 
experience never could have written the " Confessions 
of a Beautiful Soul." Irreverent unbelief marks inferior 
power in Byron, Heine, and Poe. In the light of in- 
tuition, and over the gulf of atheistic understanding, 
Shakspeare springs the arch of faith ; and no Greek 
or EngUsh prayer-book affords finer collects than come 
from the mouths of his interlocutors in the action of 
many a piece, as it naturally flows. He knew what it 



324 PORTRAITS. 

means to " cast thy burden on the Lord," and that 
such inspiration is the next act after despair ! For the 
poet speaks under influence. He is mastered by the 
muse and never its master, although it have conditions 
for its gifts. Its stream bursts like an artesian well 
after much digging. " The wind bloweth where it list- 
eth ; " but it listeth to blow through some channel of 
conscious need, that, like a vacuum of air around a 
headland, sucks its current in ! The heavenl}^ or the 
possessed man whom we call artist, and who drinks 
from God like the saint, cannot explain his wa3'S ; 
and, if he could, he would decease and go by default. 
The trickster, Cagliostro or any other, can let 3'ou into 
the secret, show his hand, and tell how he does his 
trick ! But stud}^ can only build the staging on which 
power appears, miraculous and never understanding it- 
self. Perfect art is but preparation for perfect nature 
and the breathing-hole of genius, as its lungs and the 
sea help the whale to gambol and sport. God works, 
but does not labor. His effort is ease, and his accom- 
plishment perpetual play. 

Where so much is memorable in an author one fears 
to quote. The qiioter cites himself! Do we not judge 
of the sort of insect by its fljing to a hone3'suckle or 
seeking tainted food? But is not Ferdinand's asking 
Miranda's name chiefly that he might " set it in his 
pra3^ers," and Hamlet's begging Ophelia, 

" Nymph, in thy orisons 
Be all my sins remembered," 

and the usurping king's appeal, 

*' Help, angels, make assay ! 
Bow, stubborn knees ! and, heart, with strings of steel, 
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe/* 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 325 

proof for the poet that his closet had a door? A 
Shakspeare expurgated by a scientist of what he counts 
superstition no scientist could read. The divinity is 
not lacking, but lurking in ten thousand lines which 
mention not its name. The elements are our poet's 
pigments. All nature is in solution for his experiments ; 
and his handling is more dexterous than that of the 
man who does the puzzle of knots and rings. It is not 
ingenuit}', but that vitalitj^ indispensable in all the arts, 
which have this common bond. How it lures us in the 
landscapes of Millet and Corot, and the portraits of 
Couture ! The burden of old oppression, the pathos of 
meek suffering, the forming cloud of political revolution, 
as, in the picture of the " Sower," the poor peasants drive 
home from the furrows the sunset team, enter, as we 
gaze, into the quick. The canvas of Corot is saturated 
with tender sentiment, and pervaded as with a thin 
smoke from human homes, while a certain grandeur in 
Couture's motive and execution reminds us of the an- 
cient style. But Shakspeare was a painter too. Hu- 
man nature sat to him, and nature furnished the tints. 
The world was his studio, and his values were right. 
The physical immensities subserve his spiritual de- 
signs. 

" There 's not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st, 
But in his motion hke an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins." 

Could Job or David do better? Lorenzo tells Stephano 
to bring his " music forth into the air," because soft 
stillness and the night become its ' ' touches ; " and 
straightway the little twangling pipes and chords are 
lifted to the spheres, and the stars made the servants 



326 PORTRAITS. 

of a serenade. Daybreak ceases to be an event in 
nature. It is the time for ttie lover to leave his mis- 
tress's window, and for the ghost to flee as it snuffs the 
morning air. A vegetable shall be an example. 

*' And winking Mary-buds begin 
To ope their golden eyes : 
"With every thing, that pretty bin, 
My lady sweet, arise ! " 

All without is tool or plaything for the poet's purpose. 
In his exchange the world is converted like paper into 
coin. Always it is specie pa3'ment with him. AU na- 
ture is the note of hand and the gold-room in his mind. 
When Duncan, in " Macbeth," says, 

" This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses," 

do we think it is for the description's sake? What 
threat of rising tempest could surpass the suggestive- 
ness of this charming frontispiece ? As a white clo.ud in 
Indian seas hides the terrible thunder and wind, so what 
sketches of passion, cyclones of ambition, whirls of 
supernatural visiting, and lightnings of fate lie behind 
this foreground, so softly shining, lovely, and pure ! In 
Shakspeare's orrery comet or planet has its place. 

But was Shakspeare a moral man ? We must judge 
him by his handling of his instrument, in the same 
measure as we do David by his harp ; and what a 
tuning-key he holds ! Nature has no more success in her 
choir, composed of the roar of the sea, ripple on the 
beach, and wind in the trees, to accompany the birds, 
than has our poet in making the strong passions and the 
tender affections to chime. Shylock or lago strikes 



THE PERSON- ALITY OF SHAKSPEAEE. 327 

some bass drum or bassoon in the orchestra ; and were 
that note missed, the concert would be marred. " This 
is Beethoven's Gethsemane," said a performer of some 
strain full of struggle. From Shakspeare's harmony 
no sin or sorrow can escape. Be the jarring what it 
may, he persuades us that the world is concord. Could 
Judas be spared out of the gospel picture? Nothing 
and no one can be spared. Shakspeare was no ascetic ; 
but who shall say it was not innocent pleasure in which 
he lived? He was no professor of religion, like loose 
Queen Mary or cruel Elizabeth, and he enjo5'ed a quip 
at strait-laced puritans and long-faced hypocrites ; but 
how he dehghted to communicate jo}' ! He teaches us 
to reserve no good ; and in case of heart-bleeding, so 
to S3'mpathize with our fellow, brother or sister, as not 
to know from which heart it comes ! But no drunkard 
or debauchee could he have been. When Daniel Web- 
ster was charged with being continually in his cups, — as 
one said, " the ship of State in full career, with a drunk- 
ard at the helm," — it was answered, Webster's were not 
the works of an habitual sot ! From what but a con- 
stant and immense sobrietj'^ could Shakspeare's works, 
which we call pla3's, have come? Napoleon allowed 
himself four hours' sleep. Could he the poet have 
had more, who achieved his stint in scarce above a 
score of years? Through what big, chaste, well-ordered 
apartments must the characters from his all-conceiving 
imagination have trooped ! 

Who was he ? Doubtless a hearty despiser of all pre- 
tence. " Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, 
there shall be no more cakes and ale?" in " Twelfth 
"Night " says Sir Toby to the Clown, who answers, 



328 PORTRAITS. 

*' Yes, and ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too." But, 
if so much may be cited against any principle or 
policy of prohibition, or the making of abstinence a 
boast and all indulgence a sin, how Hamlet, on the other 
hand, brands and scores intemperance when he tells 
Horatio, " We will teach you to drink deep ere 3'ou de- 
part," and says the custom is " honored more in the 
breach than in the observance " ! To what disgrace and 
pinching torment, in " The Tempest," come the sottish 
Trinculo and Stephano? What account in the Bible 
has more of shame and woe than that of the witty and 
profligate Falstaff, as King Henry puts him aside with 
the epithet ' ' vain man " ? When the dissolute courtier 
expires, fumbling the sheets, babbling of gi-een fields, 
and crying out, " God, God, God," what draft or re- 
vision of the Ten Commandments was ever more sol- 
emn since the covers of the Pentateuch were put on? 
When the guilty Alonzo was supernaturally thrown into 
dreams which make nature the voice of conscience, 
when the billows spoke and the winds sang and the 
thunder " did bass his trespass," then in this scripture 
of humanity what a halo of beautj^, discourse of har- 
mony, and illustration of law ! 

Indecencies are b}^ Shakspeare expressed ; but no 
one ever told the story of uncleanness more cleanly, 
with greater simplicity, or with less relish of his own 
imparted in his st3'le. There is something to skip in 
the Old Testament, and the preacher must have a 
washed mouth for some passages in the New. There 
is in our author naught to tempt or corrupt for whoever 
survej^s fairl}^ the relations in ever}^ scene. In Solo- 
mon's Proverbs or David's fift3'-first penitential Psalm 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 329 

is purity more awful than in " Measure for Measure," in 
the tale of Angelo and Isabel? If life be a masquerade, 
here is an unmasker who lets no veil or visor sta}' ; and 
the revealer is no saint in his own esteem, but constructs 
a confessional with which no curtained priestl}' box can 
vie. Who can refuse to absolve him on reading the 
tender sonnet beginning 

" Oh, for my sake do you with Fortune chide ! " 

Is nothing known of Shakspeare's character? Behold 
in his poetry his personality ! He is but half concealed 
in every figure in which he impersonates another, and 
he is openly shown in every sonnet where he personates 
himself. More subtle, deep, and full-proportioned is 
the man in his dramas than in the sonnets, that but 
circle around his individualit}^, like those arrested cur- 
rents that wear smooth basins in rock}- beds among the 
hills. This world of his was not made out of nothing^, 
nor the brick for his building fashioned without straw 
and fire and fierce kneading in the furnace, though the 
smoke be gone, and not a foul atom left from the chim- 
ney that burned its own soot. 

Who was Shakspeare? He was not Lord Bacon, 
who lacked virtue even more, if possible, than he did 
genius for the task which some have imputed as his. 
Internal evidence is there in all these benignant gospels 
that their writer was a truth-teller at least and in- 
comparably just. He was a very un-Romish Catholic, 
one comma of whose pen could not by the gold of king- 
doms be bribed. Bacon is strong to draw along loaded 
wagons of treasure in his Essa3's ; but where is the 
light and lambent flame which in this alchemist's lab- 



330 PORTRAITS. 

oratory licks into airy beauty every atom of the work? 
Where in the stately and ponderous sage is the melody 
which in the bard so sweetens and lifts eyerj lyric and 
interluding snatch, as well as in the argument ever}^ 
sober line ? We think that as a musical composer must 
have his notes in imagination before he puts down his 
score, so Shakspeare's, like Mendelssohn's, must at first 
have been " songs without words." 

Who was Shakspeare? A genial friend, trusted by 
the townsfolk with business in London, and himself a 
thriving man. His wares did not indeed come out of 
a wretched garret. His muse was not poverty, nor 
to misery goes the credit or responsibilit}^ for what he 
brought to pass. It were unreasonable in Anne Hatha- 
way not to be content with her spouse ! Was aught 
free and easy in his manners? He could be no acid 
bigot, not intolerant, uncharitable, self-righteous, or 
spiritually proud. He had a humanity, liberality, and 
forgiveness Heaven-like and world-wide. Fanaticism 
may have its excellence, and good-nature its defect. 
But in the balance let me shrink from the first and 
incur the last, though at the cost of overlooking some 
follies in my fellows or having some weaknesses to par- 
don in m^^self , remembering what one said about ' ' the 
holier than thou " ! What avails purity in one that 
stings us with his persistent notional rebuke, and like a 
buzzing insect returns to the same spot ; in a masculine 
or feminine spy whose interrogations keep alive the in- 
quisition, torturing and killing with inquiry ; in a human 
brier that takes toll of the skin or wool of every crea- 
ture that may pass? Shakspeare was, and teaches us 
to be, none such. When he deprecates being com- 
memorated, 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 331 

"Lest the wise world should look into your moan, 
And mock you with me after I am gone," 

we think of some etude of Chopin, some sonata or 
funeral march of Beethoven ; and we enshrine the 
writer in the recollection he repudiates and abjures. 
Was he not a serious man who said 

" Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds " 1 

Was his disinterestedness betraj'ed? In the oft-quoted 
lines, 

"Take, oh, take those lips away," 

the close is commonly omitted, 

" But my kisses bring again," 

which is the most touching and imaginative part. 
Charles Lamb has an essay on persons one would wish 
to have seen. Would not our curiosity spare all the 
courts in Christendom to meet Shakspeare ? But do we 
not meet him personally, if not individually ? Individ- 
uality is one's distinction from another. It may be in 
beast, tree, stone, or in any thing as well as man. Per- 
sonality is one's expression of universal spirit and truth. 
It is a property of the soul. It is the organ and instru- 
ment of the spirit within or above. Individually, we 
ma}" part company; personally, we unite. The person- 
alit}' is not our selves^ wherein is separateness, but our 
self; and the self we are to love is in all, as in our own 
breast. " I shall be delighted with me when it comes." 
The woman was personal who said that ! She adored the 
Infinite Personality we all share. As from under the 
old actor's mask sounded through his voice the sense of 
the character he would set forth, so all mortal shapes 



832 PORTRAITS. 

are masks of God. He exists in countless persons, not 
in three alone. In proportion as the utterance is vast 
and delicate and pure, the man is great and divine. 
What a personage is Shakspeare by this rule ! Some- 
thing of whatever we handle will stick to the palm. In 
California a thief greased his fingers when he came to 
tr}^ the sample of gold diist in the cask at his neighbor's 
store. " Will a man rob God?" He may as much as 
he will, and the riches will never decrease. He who 
steals thus also bestows. How much Shakspeare im- 
parted of the great fund ! 

It is said, one can write what he does not feel. The 
poets enchant us with a figure or spectacle of senti- 
ments which they do not partake. It is all imagina- 
tion ! But what is imagination ? It is the eye of the 
soul, with which only "the pure in heart" can see 
either God or man. It was well said, " Show me the 
poetr}^ composed by a bad man, and I will show you 
wherein it is not poetry." On this principle, I think 
Shakspeare was good, as holy as Saint Augustine, 
without such grossness in him to overlook. 

Who was he? Could any one but a patriot have 
written as he did, in " King John," concerning 

" That pale, that white-faced shore " 1 

In " Henr}'^ Y." the Duke of Exeter says, 

"Never king of England 
Had nobles richer, and more loyal subjects ; 
Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England, 
And lie pavilioned in the fields of France." 

Of this vision of an army across the Straits and with 
their tents on the sunny foreign plains, without a bugle 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 833 

blown, foot on the march, or sail spread, who can calcu- 
late the effect on English courage since? The poet's 
service to his country all her consols could not pa}'. 
He was not a poorer patriot for being cosmopolite. In 
the same play the description of York's and Suffolk's 
death shows a feeling that neither gushed nor was 
ashamed to flow. 

So I call Shakspeare not impersonal, but an immense 
personality. We think the earth is flat, because we see 
not its curve ; and we say Shakspeare exists only as an 
influence, because we cannot measure his will. God is 
held to be impersonal on the same ground. What are 
all our faculties but as paper or leather visors to trans- 
mit the Divine voice ? We must not call such an one a 
showman, who is here to please us with his menagerie 
of performers, spangled riders, tame monkej'S, and wild 
beasts ! A little water shut in by a dam turns the wheels 
of a tide-mill. But it was lifted on the shoulders of the 
sun and moon. It takes a greater energy to suppl}' the 
motive-power of the soul. Whence but from a vigor 
equal to all heroic deeds could this portrait come ? 

" Danger knows full well 
That Csesar is more dangerous than he. 
We were two lions, littered in one day. 
And I the elder and more terrible." 

Can one picture that with which he is in no wise pos- 
sessed ? Yet from this pitch he can come down to 
" Audrey," as her lover sa3's, " a poor thing, but mine 
own," and fix her in our memory as well as he does the 
ruler of Rome. What is the width of the solar system 
to this mental parallax? 



334 PORTRAITS. 

A provider of pleasure was Shakspeare, like any 
other story-teller ; but bej^ond all beside, — Scott, Cer- 
vantes, George Eliot, or George Sand, — he was an 
apostle of verity, a preacher of righteousness, and a 
son of consolation. What burial-service in all the 
liturgies of the churches and nations has a musical 
sadness and solace to compare with the song in " Cym- 
beline " over the body of Cloten ? What ' ' Ode to the 
Duke of Wellington " shall be laid beside it ? Who was 
Cloten but a foolish boy, though born prince ? Yet what 
king, priest, or pope had such a funeral hymn ? 

You tell me Shakspeare was not religious ! Who ever 
mused more deeply on the duty and end of man? Had 
he not ' ' chewed the cud of sweet and bitter fancy " ? 
Of what material did he weave ? Handel, Haydn, Mo^ 
zart, felt not their subjects more. 

The sort of man he was ? One that had loved, — 
what particular man or woman matters not, doubtless 
all women and all men, hating none ; and if betrayed 
or deserted, he could forgive. 

" Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, 
And I will comment upon that offence ; 
Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt, 
Against thy reasons making no defence." 

What ^olian harp in the window lamenting one gone 
out of the door, what "Elegy in a Countr}^ Church- 
3'ard," what unheard chant of inward grief over the un- 
seen grave where dead hopes lie buried never to rise 
again, or what obsequies of our own affections, to which 
we go, could in tender, mournful depth exceed the 

" Blow, blow, thou winter wind ! " 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 335 

But, as though there were naught dismal in the world, 
no "Amiens" melancholy, no Jaques or Hamlet half 
mad, how, without recollection of grief or a wrinkle 
of pain, the same artist can give us the rapture and 
radiance of first love in Ferdinand and Miranda, — 

" At first sight they have changed eyes." 

Who shall try to describe the same thing in other 
words ? Each is conscious only of the sight with which 
he or she is viewed, and two souls are one in a single 
look ! 

"The Tempest" seems the last and loftiest of this 
mountain-chain, the Himalaya of our literature, and 
firm in the world as any of its continental backbones. 
Surel}' Shakspeare is Prospero. 

But go from magic to history ; and in the historic 
pla3's we have not only the Greeks, the Romans, and the 
Eg3'ptians presented well, but the English filing out in 
squadrons, and the head Englishman, with martial blood 
in his cool and fiery veins, shaking a spear as verily his 
ancestors did ! Caesar and Coriolanus are drawn as 
justly as the Henries. Egypt is perfect in "Antony 
and Cleopatra," which for sustained action is the top 
round, — the sentences a succession of shocks as from 
a battery, or photographs from a ship rocking on the 
waves, or portraits taken by a flash. 

" Far along 
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, 
Leaps the live thunder " 

of war, overridden with battling desires of the poten- 
tates by whom it is waged. Yet Shakspeare is not in 
any one of them, so much as he is the magician in his 



336 PORTKAITS. 

cell on the enchanted island, or in the soothsayer, the 
truth-teller. 

" In Nature's infinite book of secrecy 
A little I have read." 

In " Antony and Cleopatra " the start is as of a horse 
at full speed, who never slackens his rate, though the 
rider holds bridle, till he touches the goal, while we ai*e 
all taken en croupe on the hot steed. 

Who, then, is Shakspeare? Creator and colonizer of 
the world with a host of beings more real liian any flesh 
and blood, and a multiplier of the inhabitants of the 
globe. For, while mortals drop like leaves, and vanish 
like vapors, and pass as shadows of the night, the planet 
has a permanent population. It is made up in part of 
actual heroes, founders and fathers, martyrs and saints. 
In religion we have Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. In art 
we have Michael Angelo, Raphael, and their compeers. 
In war we have Alexander and Napoleon, who are not 
inclined 3'et quite to take their leave. In law we have 
Solon and Lycurgus. In philosophy we have Plato and 
Aristotle. In music we have Beethoven and Mozart. 
We have great men that become myths, like Hercules 
and Achilles ; and good men that cast reflections of a 
patriarchal stature across the landscape, like the Pil- 
grims ; and poets, like Homer, Dante, and Shakspeare, 
whose classes and types may outlive all individual 
forms. What living king, queen, courtier, or states- 
man could we not better dispense with than with the 
portraitures which show us what a mistress, governor, 
gentleman, or lady is or ought to be ? 

The women are equal or equivalent to the men. 
"The ever- womanly " drew on Goethe and Shakspeare. 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 337 

If only a man could write of woman as Shakspeare 
does, only from love of woman and from woman's love 
could he write. Such is the condition of manl}' genius, 
of which no hater or despiser of woman ever had one 
spark ! Woman's inspiration prompts every best word 
of a man's pen. These word-pictures of female heads 
shall hold their colors when the tints of Titian and 
Murillo are pale on the wall. Who was Shakspeare? 
A man that did justice to the sex, and waited not for 
the slowl}' revolving wheels of reform. 

It goes as a proverb, that we know naught of Shak- 
speare the man. Yet I would wager my life that there 
was no cruelt}' in him, but that he was kind to those 
fellow-creatures whom we libel as dumb and irrational. 
Let them answer for him, — the lark " that sings at 
heaven's gate," the crow that "flies in heaven's sweetest 
air," and the dogs he paints better than Landseer, or 
the wounded deer that bids the rest of the herd 

" Sweep on, ye fat and greasy citizens ! " 
Was he not a song-bird himself ? 

" Or sweetest Shakspeare, fancy's child, 
Warble his native wood-notes wild." 

He was a composition of man, woman, and child. 
Was it the unprecedented goodness of Jesus to women, 
not a word from his mouth being ever uttered against 
one of them, which made Chaucer write, 

" Christ was a maid ere he was shapen as a man"? 

Surel}^ our poet too entered into their ver^' heart. " A 
woman does not forgive coldness, even if it be the 
mask of love," writes George Eliot ; and while the 
authorship of the novels under this title was in doubt. 

22 



338 PORTRAITS. 

a critic said no man ever could have written that sen- 
tence. But when the bad news comes of Antony's mar- 
riage, and Cleopatra sa3's, 

" Pity me, Charmian, but do not speak to me," 

might not as sharp an objection arise to male author- 
ship ? 

In fine, this freshest e^'e that ever looked on the 
world was of a man who did not disown or dishonor 
the past. 

" All before us lies the way," 

3^et we must look back. The great leaders are behind. 
The doctrines of evolution and survival of the fit- 
test, which it is the glory of our Spencer and Darwin 
to expound, must have some abatement to be square 
with the facts. Antiquitj^ never loses its claim. The 
old mountains are the highest ; and the last one thrown 
up, Monte Nuovo near Naples, has an altitude of but 
a few hundred feet. Very ancient are the mountain 
ridges and peaks of human greatness ! The traveller, 
after he has passed, turns to gaze on Mount Wash- 
ington and Mont Blanc. Mankind is a traveller, and 
cannot take off" its eyes from shapes that dwarf all 
present illustration of its glories and aims, — those of 
Socrates and Plato, of the Hindoo Sak3'a Mouni and 
the Hebrew Messiah. One of these memorable bene- 
factors is of Anglo-Saxon blood, high up in his stature 
to any Greek, Roman, or Jewish level, chief intellect- 
ual influence of the modern world. Was he a trifler 
because an inditer and actor of plays? The universe 
is God's play or his pla^'ground ! All our work will be 
play in paradise. We wait but to perfect our powers of 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 339 

thought and love for that. Shakspeare takes up the line 
between sacred literature and profane. Do the New 
Testament writers mean to express the inferiority of 
matter to spirit b}' their picture of a final conflagration 
of the world? They surpass not in sublimit}^ Pros- 
pero's speech to Ferdinand, — 

" The great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind : we are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 

Did he think that w^as the end, — he that put into 
Hamlet's soliloqu}' the words, " to sleep, perchance to 
dream," and who wrote, 

"Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! " 

and to the priest's objurgation of doom and " ground 
unsanctified " for Ophelia's burial makes Laertes reply, 

"A ministering angel shall my sister be 
When thou liest howling " 1 

The poet knew how to reverse an ecclesiastical decis- 
ion. What a refuge he affords, in his region of beaut}", 
from the pretence of sectai'ists to settle questions by 
other authorit}' than the human mind ! Renan speaks 
of les hommes ranges^ the drilled men. Shakspeare is a 
liberator ; and Milton the Puritan, with his 

" Dear son of memory, great heir of fame," 

is a eulogist of this spiritual renewer, in any one of 
w^hose lines is more delight for us than in the most 
flattering compliment we ever received. He is an auto- 
biographer. He is as well known as anybody that ever 



840 PORTRAITS. 

lived. He was a transcendent moralist before tran- 
scendentalism was born. But morality with him is 
a principle, not a rule. Was Desdemona the "liar" 
she was called by Othello? When the disciples ask 
Jesus who had sinned, the parents or the blind man, 
and he answers, "Neither," would not an Orthodox pro- 
fessor have to convict the Master of falsehood, and sa}', 
"Both" ? By either teacher, the great head of the Church 
or the humble player in the booth, instinct was alike re- 
vered, and by no dogma or wilful standard was it set 
aside. Principles cannot, like cattle, be put in pound, 
nor right become a rut. Jesus orders swords, and con- 
demns their use. The Quaker may drop his custom with 
his coat, when Sumter is under fire. "Nice customs 
courtesy to great kings ; " and those kings are laws by 
which all establishments are overridden or undercut. 
Man is a law to himself. One may honestly call for a 
world's convention of peace, yet, in peculiar circum- 
stances, long for the gunship Canandaigua to open her 
guns in Samana Bay, on San Domingo Isle. We must 
know the whole story before we can be sure whether 
certain acts or intimacies of human creatures, be they 
men or women, are right or wrong. Circumstances do 
not alter cases, for every case is determined from the 
centre of the soul's point of view. The real person 
is identical with the real truth. From the serious smil- 
ing poet none of this wisdom was hid. 

The truth, which Pilate asked for, is to be told at all 
times, 3'et it can never be fully told. It is not fact, but 
a spirit in and over all details. All persons do not 
have property in a fact. It may be mine or yours, 
and fitly kept in an iron vault or in the safe of your or 



THE PERSONALITY OF SHAKSPEARE. 841 

my mind. We must be true to persons ; but telling their 
just secrets is how false ! Judas spoke the truth when he 
told where Jesus was to be found ; in his veracit}- he 
was an informer, a spj^ and a traitor, deserving the low- 
est place in hell, Dante being judge. Of all things, 
hatred and selfishness are the most untrue. How loving, 
unselfish, and true Desdemona was in shielding her hus- 
band, and exposing herself, — poor, tender buckler ! 
The exposure was eternal honor for her. So we will not 
disparage Shakspeare, nor lower her from her niche of 
fame. 



342 PORTKAITS. 



II. 

CHANGING, THE PREACHER. 

IT will soon be thirty-seven years since the subject of 
this essay died, or disappeared. But I observe, after 
longer lapses of time, the figures walk down from their 
frames in our parlors or in Faneuil Hall for every new 
crisis of action or thought. The picture on our walls 
whose beauty sinks into and becomes part of us is a 
living blessing ; how much more the fresh incarnation 
of a good and great man ! M}^ sketch of Channing has 
a background in my own experience far away. It must 
be nearly sixty years since, in the town of Freeport, 
Maine, I heard my father and uncle talking with much 
animation of a preacher whose voice had been heard 
somewhere in the neighborhood, and some printed word 
also from whom had reached their eyes ; and the lift and 
lightening of their faces seemed to the little bo}^ to 
extend to the landscape and embrace the horizon. To 
men of the present generation it were hard to conceive 
of the cloud of a gloomy- theology then brooding over 
New England. The joy of my relatives in their new- 
found teacher of liberty and love was for me, at seven 
years of age, nothing less than the rem. oval of a curse. 
When, of a hot summer afternoon, in the ill- ventilated 
church women fainted and were borne out, my childish 
thought was that they had been summoned to the dread- 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 343 

fill judgmient the minister had just preached. I used to 
walk and wander alone, repeating for the hundredth time 
to m3-self, " God be merciful to me, a sinner," although 
of what particular sin I had committed I was not aware, 
only I could imagine no escape from the universal 
depravity and doom. In the intermission of service, 
m}' father's sister having been the minister's wdfe, how 
closel}' I w^as kept at her house or our room ! But occa- 
sionall}'' being allowed of a Sunday afternoon to go to 
a rocky height in my father's pasture, and take turns 
with him looking through a spy-glass after the sails of 
his vessels expected home from sea, I had a pleasure 
which prayer or sermon seldom gave. There was annu- 
ally a trip from the village out among the nearest of the 
three hundred and sixty-five islands in the Penobscot 
Ba}', which excursion bound the seasons in a beautiful 
ring whose gems were the sparkling waves. But I 
remember no delight like that of the new dispensation 
of religion by the prophet whom I so longed to see. 
Drawn at length, it ma}' be by that very impulse, in due 
course to the Divinit}' School in Cambridge, the Fed- 
eral Street Church in Boston became straightwa}- a 
magnet. I listened to the famous Liberal, went to see 
him in Newport and in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and 
on my settlement found, but a street between his resi- 
dence and my own. For the last five 3*ears of his life 
I visited him or received calls from him, walked and 
talked in his company, discussed with him all the sub- 
jects on which he loved to dwell, and now am glad, as in 
some humble wa}* among the trustees of his reputation, 
to testif}^ of the traits of his disposition and his mind. 
But his bodih' feature and bearing must not be passed 



344 PORTRAITS. 

by. Channing was insignificant in figure. Short, 
slender, thin, as I knew him, scarce more than a hun- 
dred pounds of flesh clothed and seized in him the 
informing soul. One introduced to him exclaimed in 
amazement at the slight stature of the mighty preacher, 
"I thought you were six feet tall." Certainl3Mn the 
desk he was of a commanding height. But he had to 
wrap his weak chest in many a covering, when he went 
out, against the damp and cold, and was very often 
only able to pace up and down on the sidewalk before 
his dwelling in the sun, till his slowl}" moving form be- 
came one of the sights in Boston. But he might have 
said to any one, as Napoleon to the marshal who 
reached to the Emperor a book from an upper shelf 
remarking, " I am higher than you, sire," — "Longer, 
not higher ! " His eyes were so communicative that his 
friends disputed about the color, which was lost in the 
expression. Where was the hiding of the power of 
that marvellous voice, — one of the three most eloquent, 
says Emerson, he has heard ; and surel}" like none be- 
side, having more in it of the violin than the flute, yet 
with liquid notes such as Wilhelmj or Joiachim can 
fetch from the strings, and with an habitual rising inflec- 
tion, rather than cadence, at the end of the sentence, 
which seemed to raise every hearer to the skies. It 
melted and resounded, was clear when it whispered, and 
a clarion when it rang. He told me that with speaking 
for many jxars new tones had been developed in his 
voice. Ver}^ peculiar in its charm was his reading of 
the Scriptures and of the hj'mns, of which Emerson sa3'S 
again, " He read into them more than I could afterwards 
find." When on an Easter Sunday the line left his lips, 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 345 

" Angel, roll the stone away," 

the stone never, in the infinite distance, seemed to 
cease to roll. 

" Vain are the cliarms and faint tlie rays 
The hrightest creatures boast, 
And all their grandeur and their praise 
Are in Thy presence lost." 

He threw an insignificance on the first three lines in 
amazing contrast with the majestic close. He had a 
theor}' about public speaking which he expounded for 
my edification, that it was simpl}' a matter of light and 
shade in the sentence. But I fanc}' that only with the 
particular artist, as with Titian or Tintoretto, the effect 
could ever come. However sensitive to just expression 
of his thought, he was more concerned with what he 
said, and to whom, than how he said it. An unbeliever 
at his house complaining of Christ's severity to the 
Pharisees, Channing turned to the passage, and recited 
the *\Yo upon Wo, until the unbeliever cried out, " I 
withdraw m}" objection if he spoke in that tone ! " In- 
deed in sweet voices was the advent of the new faith. 
Edward Everett, whose own utterance was such an 
entrancing spell, said he firml}^ believed Bnckminster's 
voice the most melodious that ever issued from human 
lips. Henr}' Claj-'s voice was called a band of music ; 
Webster's was a trumpet, Channing's a harp. 

But it is the man's interior I would portra}^ ; and 
character, even more than genius, was his mark. He 
had not so much visions as views. One long fit of 
contemplation and reflection was his life. His intellect 
was of the ideal stamp. But one, regarding his 
thoughts as rather derivative than original, somewhat 



846 PORTRAITS. 

cynically called him a " potted Plato." He shared the 
Platonism which existed before Plato was born. 

Leaving his philosophy, I note in his character, first, 
its height. He suggested the zenith. 'He told me 
what a relief alwa^^s it was for him to look up from the 
troubled earth into the unruffled sky. His elevation 
was so habitual that going to see liim was like mount- 
ing an observatory ; 3'ou must ascend, he could not 
come down, and 3^ou found him adjusting his instrument, 
and caring only that you should look through the long 
reflector with himself. As Wordsworth said of Milton, 

" His soul was like a star and dwelt apart." 

Channing could not turn his eye to you without turning 
his head. As on an elevated railway lay his track. Peo- 
ple were vexed at having to go up so high to get noth- 
ing, as they sometimes said ; for, with all the love and 
wisdom in him like a climate, there was no flash, no sur- 
prising play of wit, little original suggestion, and not 
the least condescension to a lower state. Edward T. 
Taylor, that prince and playfellow of imagination, of 
whom Channing said he knew all about the Platonic 
wings, admitted Channing's talents, but denied his edu- 
cation ! He was not, hke Taylor, a graduate of the 
university of the world. 

I note, next, Channing's simplicity, of which Fenelon 
had not more. Returning from a great dinner, he said 
it was an enormous sacrifice to the flesh, but he was 
comforted to find how little of it was consumed, and 
he spoke as if he had been in a strange land among the 
Fijis and got safely back. Taking wine one day at his 
medical brother's prescription, he observed that it tasted 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 347 

as he supposed brand}^ must, he was so unused to it. 
Going out of his entiy, he put on a 3'oung companion's 
hat, and as it went down over his ears, turned and 
said, " I did not suppose 3-our head was bigger than 
mine." Being invited to preach a New York dedica- 
tion-sermon, he decUned from lack of sj^mpatbj^ with 
the building of fine churches. He needed no cathedral 
aids to make his own service impressive. " "When he 
spoke of the human soul," says Taylor, " I thought I 
should have gone over the galler}^ ; " and he added, 
" Hear such preaching as that and go to hell after 
all ? " The flowers in his garden cheered him not for 
their own sake, but as prophecies of a better condition 
of mankind. The ocean delivered his soul of strug- 
gling thoughts, and accompanied with its resonance his 
anthems of praise. His quality was not the conscious 
and aflfected simpleness which Matthew Arnold satir- 
izes, but the Homeric simplicit}' the same essayist com- 
mends. Not a smart sentence, rolled under the tongue 
and calculated for effect, or intended as wit, can be 
quoted from his books. Like Paul, he often said " I ; " 
but that pronoun was never his object, rarely his sub- 
ject, always his instrument and means. As he said of 
Milton, "he rose without effort or affectation to the 
style of an apostle." It was a scriptural st3'le and the 
Master's manner. The ponderous Johnsonian method, 
prevalent in his time, of approaching as by siege-par- 
allels a subject, he broke up with an unprecedented di- 
rectness, and, as one said, proposed, like General Grant, 
to move immediate!}' on the enemj^'s works. There 
was nothing mystical in his mode. His page is a limpid, 
rushing stream. He did not kindle by condensing, nor 



348 PORTRAITS. 

as with a compound blow-pipe could he fuse refractory 
substances, but b}" dint of the reality and the repeating 
of his convictions won his way ; and it takes now a 
good deal of him or of his writing to appreciate his 
property, as it does a large quantitj^ of the air to get 
the blue of the sky. He was devoid of ambition. 
Fenelon's wish to be unknowui, Wesle3''s to have no 
monument, and the hiding of Moses's tomb, found 
echoes in his heart. He scarce looked to see where his 
shot struck, brave marksman as he was. A higher 
than any personal aim is the lesson of his life. He was 
the best of listeners, and not talkative himself. He 
that is greedy of an audience has nothing to say ! A 
lad brought him a book with the publishers' request to 
dedicate it to him. He reijlied at the threshold, " Boy, 
take it away ! " He asked people in church, if they 
could, to suppress their cough, conversing, as with 
friends, from the desk. He did not read notices of 
himself in the public press ; and when a dear brother 
clerg3'man had printed a review of his book, he asked 
his wife to read to him not the eulogistic but the criti- 
cal parts. He did not repl}' to attacks, fearing, he said, 
the lowering effect of lingering about his own writ- 
ings, and thinking "men were enslaved to none so 
much as to themselves." He but wanted, as Edmund 
Burke tokl his electors, to be allowed to go on. An 
almost incredible childlikeness is affirmed in some 
authentic anecdotes of him. After tr3-ing in vain to 
make some ladies understand a point he was making, 
he relapsed slowly into his chair, saying, " I wish wo- 
men had more mind ! " He erased one word, " very," 
from a letter convfeying a compliment to a friend from 



CHANGING, THE PREACHER. 349 

others, that his statement might be exactly correct ; and 
he rewrote a second and third time his articles, not 
to make them more taking, but more true. He said to 
me, " I hope prosperity will not relax your study ; I do 
not think it has mine." 

The sincerity which is the offspring of simplicity was 
conspicuous in him ; and he stated the ground of sin- 
cerity' as being interested in what one had to sa}' . He 
did not care to utter aught but what was precious to his 
own soul, what he was^ and had lived and loved before 
he spoke. Man}' a boisterous speaker, we feel, has no 
affection in his own heart for the positions he so proudly 
takes, and would, like a retained law3'er, argue the other 
side, the next day, with equal zeal. No such loud foren- 
sic pleader or platform-pretender was our true divine. 
He could not bear what was underhand. "Stop!" 
cried he to one talking scandal of the absent, "or I 
shall go and tell them ever}' word 3'ou sa}'." When one 
informed him that he had written an anon3'mous letter to 
a dealer in intoxicating liquors, Channing answered, " I 
am sony so good a man as 3'ou should have done that ! " 
This frankness made him never so 3'oung and enterpris- 
ing as at threescore. " Were I to begin life again," said 
an Enalish statesman. " it would be as an aoitator." 
Theological]}' the bo}' Channing was the conservative, so 
far as he was such at all, and the radical was the man. 
But the youth had not got through college or finished 
*^is college part before, like Tennyson's sailor-bo}', 

" He whistled to the morning-star." 

Hey had that sign of all greatness, gravitation to the 
trutK. In this he resembled AYebster, Lincoln, Galla- 



350 PORTRAITS. 

tin, Marshall, and other great men of state. He as well 
as they knew that if the centre be unstable, or the ful- 
crum slip, the purchase will fail. Channing's passion was 
to see how the thing stood. At Naushon, being found 
with a cue in his hand at a small billiard- table, playing 
all by himself, he said, as if to excuse himself, " I am 
trying to find out the principle of this game." But 
that was his invariable question, for ivory ball or great 
globe. After three persons of his family had tried in 
vain to make the toast savory, when he was unwell, he 
said, " It is not good, — the perfect is what all our life 
we seek after and never attain." 

But in this image I must trace not only veracity, but 
sensibiUty as well, — a trait which gravity like his might 
conceal from some. Tenderness must have its shield ; 
and the gentlest persons may pass for cold, while those 
who are profuse in offers to such as need no help have 
an oily courtesy running like the ointment over Aaron's 
beard and to his garments' skirts, and get the credit of 
unction and warmth. Real sentiment appears in its un- 
conscious escapes. Channing told me it was the mobility 
of feature in Dickens with which he was struck. The 
coarse and profane language he hears in his journe}^, 
while 3^et a youth, " cuts him to the heart." Describ- 
ing the effect of a dancing girlish vision on his young 
mind, he lays his hand on his wife's arm to say that 
onl}' in his fancy the picture la}^ Walking with him 
around Boston Common, we met a woman remembered 
as an admirable teacher and mother, giving two sons, 
Charles and James, to the war. After we had traversed 
the street, interchanging remarks on various themes, he 
paused and said, " What a sweet expression on Mrs. 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 351 

Lowell's face ; it has not gone from me yet ! " His 
emotion was not demonstration, but abstinence from any 
aim at effect. He had atmosphere, but no airs. He was 
not absent-minded, but absorbed. He walked the streets 
with e^'es that saw not the shows in the shop-windows. 
Yet humorous observation, in his early 3'ears keen and 
in later ones subordinated in him, was never quite out- 
grown. He hits off the schoolmistress like Cruikshank 
or Hogarth. He made merrj- over an attorney-general's 
criticisms on his philanthrop}' in the mart3'r Lovejo}''s 
case, and over a certain doctor of divinit3''s assault on the 
Transcendentalists, Channing included. At the ordina- 
tion of Barnard and Gra}' to the ministrj^ at large, in Bos- 
ton, all the world had come to hear Channing's charge. 
Tuckerman preached for an hour and a half. After the 
services Parkman, the clerical wag of the city, said, 
"Brother Tuckerman, your sermon was excellent, but 
undeniabl}' too long. Brother Channing, was n't Brother 
Tuckerman too long? " " Ha, ha," said Channing, who 
was not going to be caught in this trap to hurt his 
friend Tuckerman's feelings, — " ha, ha," with that dry 
laugh in his throat which was all he could attain, while 
he knocked together the shoes that held his emaciated 
feet, " Brother Parkman, were 3-0U tired? I was tired 
before Brother Tuckerman began ! " 

Let me recall, next, Channing's spiritualit}'', with but 
enough of the mortal in him to hold it down, his ascen- 
sion being continual, and he himself but anchored be- 
low and tugging like a balloon at the last binding cord, 
yet with no flutter or levity but incomparable weight 
and moment in his mien as he swa3'ed and ever threat- 
ened to rise. Some in their direction go from within 



* 



352 PORTRAITS. 

without, others from without within ; and these last never 
get in. The soul must react for experience to become 
the master-light. Channing had found the centre. 
With a presence like Washington's he overcame the corn- 
pan}' and filled the room. No man more respected other 
minds, but his own made a temple wherever he was. 
Naught indecent was possible before a sanctity so com- 
plete. When a gross fault had occurred in his social 
circle, he repudiated the politic concealments with which 
in modern society scandals about distinguished persons 
are sometimes covered up. Materialism would have 
been an organic anomaly' for him. 

Serenity in him was manifest no less, yet with the 
swiftness of a courser well-trained. He observed the 
Shakspeare-player's "temperance;" and my professor 
of rhetoric classed him with Robert Hall as an example 
of the dignified style. Boston ought to give to him, 
on the score of public merits, a statue, as to Franklin, 
Webster, Everett, Sumner, and Mann ; and the bronze 
should tell in its outward composure his inward poise 
and peace, the same that appeared in Borromeo, St. 
Francis of Assisi, Savonarola, Thomas a Kempis, Jacob 
Bohme, or Jonathan Edwards, — for it is limited to no 
sect, nor, more than one of Raphael's pictures, can be 
a Gubject of dispute. That assurance, which exceeds all 
vicarious insurance, was in his breast. The moral was 
dominant in his mind. A Christian Cato, if he was 
censor it was first in his own soul. This watchman on 
the walls was ever on his good behavior to himself and 
on his guard, never threw the reins on the horse's neck, 
and did not Ijecome quite a joyfully emancipated child, 
but kept in his manners some rigidity and restraint, 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 353 

which was contagious. Yet, though sober, he was not 
sombre. He was an immense personality and motive- 
power, perhaps the chief rehgious momentum of his 
time, a Miltonic self, not so much a reporter of the 
spirit as he was the thing reported on and the report. 
I call him not religious ; he was religion, and " righteous 
overmuch." He was the core of piety, of which we are 
on the edge ! He thinks he is too serious, struggles 
against his earnest bent, complains of his inaptness for 
the pla}' of human friendship and converse, tries to be 
more familiar, but never feels far from his Infinite Friend. 
Like Christ, he continues in pra3'er all night or all da}^ 

He had a soldier's courage to challenge injurious dog- 
mas and maintain right of judgment for the private soul ; 
and he affirmed, if he had done aught worth}' of remem- 
brance after he should go, it was in his withstanding the 
imposing of a tj'rannical 3'oke in the name of religion. 
The stuff of a mart3'r was in that frail form. As he 
stood in the arena, so he would have stood at the stake. 
More hero than poet was he in his make. Subtle cor- 
respondences, nature's cipher-despatches, he was not 
keen to read ; nor did he poetically penetrate the inner 
sense of land and sea, whose outward aspect was to 
him such joy. Controvers}' left in him no mudd}' sedi- 
ment or malign heat. All dispute was to him a break- 
ing bubble, the froth of the hour. 

So the attribute of liberality' is pre-eminentlj' his. 
The Universalists were a very odious and unpopular 
body in the Church forty years ago. But when they 
were assailed as holding forth a doctrine licentious and 
sure to corrupt, he averred how loft}' was their idea of 
the final triumph of good. When the Perfectionists 

23 



354 PORTRAITS. 

were charged with like lax assumption, he rebated their 
antagonists for proclaiming the necessity of sin, and 
accorded with Father Taj'lor, who, on being asked if he 
really thought anybody had ever lived as good as Jesus 
Christ, answered, " Yes, milHons," and laughed at some 
mournful confessor at a Unitarian conference, as busy 
rolling his dirty beetle-ball of sin. Channing died in the 
perfectionist faith of the perfectibility and final actual 
perfection of every human soul. In 1840, charging 
John S. Dwight, our Boston judge of music, for a min- 
istry in Northampton, he l)ids him visit the spot where 
Edwards brought forth his profound works, and, despite 
all difference with his opinions, breathe the consecra- 
tion which his name had spread over the place, and emu- 
late ' ' his single-hearted devotion of his great powers to 
the investigation of truth." So to the doctrinal antipodes 
Channing's charity reached. His eulogy on the good 
Roman Catholic bishop, Cheverus, was well answered by 
the tolling of the Catholic bell over the way from the 
spot where the great Protestant left his handful of clay, 
with a chiming which the}^ both at once must have heard 
in heaven. Channing had never taken part in denounc- 
ing Rome. Does it not announce the millennium when 
Orthodoxy accepts the Free-thinker as a saint? Moses 
Stuart, on reading Channing's Memoirs, said, "I did 
not know what a devoted man he was." If nobod}^ 
sends us to hell for cliversitj' of opinion now, it is an 
exemption none did so much as Channing to earn. 

Because he said, " I am little of a Unitarian, but 
willingly bear the name as a title of reproach," some 
have claimed him as Orthodox, and even fancied a 
Trinity lurking in his thought. This his nephew and 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 855 

biographer, William Henr}' Channing, denounces as a 
calumn}' ; and his onl}^ son, Dr. William F. Channing, 
declares he departed from Orthodox views more widely 
the longer he lived. He himself explicitly pronounces 
that there is "no trace of a Trinity in nature or the 
soul," while he discovers also in the Bible onl}' the 
Supreme One. It were as plausible to claim Lj'man 
Beecher for a Unitarian. But he was imprisoned in 
no Unitarian denomination or sect, but a Liberal and 
catholic in the ranks. When a young man, Mr. Eustis, 
afterwards teacher of the Freedmen on the islands off 
the Georgia shore, being called to a Unitarian pulpit, 
wished to be excused from administering the elements 
of bread and wine in what is named the Lord's Sup- 
per, and a barrier against his admission was raised on 
this account, Channing took the Quaker ground, and 
protested against raising a wall of form to block any 
faithful ministry out. 

He differed with Theodore Parker about the miracles 
of Jesus Christ and his place in the creation. He 
thought no sj'stem of morals or of abstract ideas could, 
as a substitute for the historic religion, have power to 
redeem mankind. Yet he sent his love to Parker, and 
exhorted him to " pour out all his heart." One day, 
as I entered his room, I found him reading Hazlitt's 
Essavs. He remarked, " Hazlitt has said hard things 
of me, and I am taking my revenge by stud3'ing his 
books." Hazlitt had ridiculed him for dividing great- 
ness into three orders and putting himself at the head, 
in his article on Napoleon, that most famous of his 
literar}^ attempts. Hazlitt, though English, was a 
partisan of Bonaparte, Channing's treatment of whom 



236 PORTRAITS. 

seemed so harsh as to make the only instance of il- 
liberalitj, or rather narrowness, we might cite ; and 
Channing himself, in the preface to his works, as if 
touched in conscience by the criticism he had launched, 
begs the reader to notice the date of that piece. 

Let me indicate the claim of Channing's literary work. 
Its earnestness all will admit. It had, too, the great 
merit of continuity. It was a flow, a flight, and a flame. 
The stream, the bird, and the sun are its types. It 
was loft}^ and had a long wind. With some of his lit- 
erar}^ judgments it were eas}' to find fault, as, for ex- 
ample, that Milton's " Paradise Lost" is " perhaps the 
noblest monument of human genius." Against such a 
verdict the shades of Homer and ^sch^'lus and Dante 
and Goethe protest ! His Election Sermon, as fine a 
rapture on the theme of mental liberty as exists in any 
tongue, shows in its best state this at once running, 
soaring, and burning qualit}'. That on " Partaking the 
Divine Nature " is unsurpassed as a strain of transport- 
ing piet}^ while the essa}^ on Fenelon, in its examina- 
tion of the great Catholic's doctrine of self-denial, is 
his best attempt at criticism, and remains sound and 
unanswerable to this day. 

As a prophet of human nature he must mainlj' stand. 
He early discarded the dogma of total depravity. When 
he was a lad his father took him along in the chaise as 
he went to hear a famous preacher, who in his sermon 
announced eternal doom. It was not thought the child 
would take the dreadful burden in, or pay any heed to 
what should be said. But he listened, and shrank. 
The service over, the father starting on the way back 
began to whistle ; and on getting home, in apparent un- 



CHANNING, THE PKEACHER. 357 

concern for all those phials of the Revelation that had 
been uncorked, searched for the newspaper, and began 
to read, while the little one said in his heart, " He does 
not believe what he has heard, and it is not true ! " He 
doubted the Trinity at first, as he rejected it to the last. 
It may be questioned if he understood its philosophy, 
its reason for being, or the end at which it aims, 
namel}', to find betwixt the human and divine a bond 
or common term. God is one, but his unity is not 
numerical singularit}'. Father and Son are in each 
other ; and we must not shut up God in his high house 
of heaven, or with Hebrew narrowness make him a 
local Lord, onlj' grander than the heathen ones, as in 
his chariot he thunders and careers through the sk}', 
but domesticate him with his offspring on the earth ; 
and the Trinit}' is a grand and noble endeavor to fill 
with a more majestic presence the household niche from 
which the pagan Penates have been expelled. Possibl}^, 
it misses the mark in confining the Incarnation to an 
individual, one only begotten, when from all eternity 
of the famil}' of God there can be no count ; but it hits 
the centre in affirming that childhood is no less essen- 
tial than parentage in the Deit}^ " I and my Father 
are one." He would fall if I did, as the universe 
would crumble if punctured at a point. Not onl}^ im- 
manent, but identical at the root are God and man ; 
and the Trinity, in recognizing and tr3'ing to formulate 
or state this sameness, avoiding pantheism, is worthy 
of honor even in its failure or its partial success. Its 
oflSce is precious also to resist individualism as a form 
of atheism, and to substitute communit}^ or communion, 
which is truth and good, for the communism which is 



858 PORTRAITS. 

folly and hate. But the Trinity has peradventure a sec- 
ond defect in leaving out Nature, on which science so 
well insists ; while with science concurs art, or that love 
of nature which in artist and poet is so much a mod- 
ern sentiment, having a harbor in every musing mind. 
I suppose no theologian would meet this objection with 
the metaphysical plea that nature is but a mirror or 
mode of mind ; and as, on the whole, honors are divided 
between the two theologic parties in this debate, no de- 
nominational color can be suspected in these remarks. 
Be the measureless and unfathomed scene we are part 
of created or evolved, no solution of the problem will 
answer which does not include the panorama, the fore- 
ground, and background, as well as the figures in the 
picture. So must not all Unitarian or Trinitarian 
schemes give place to the conception of God as one 
and manifold ? In this or in any direction I do not 
claim for Channing supreme genius or philosophic depth. 
He lacked talent or temper to speculate. He held hard 
to ethics, and he stuck close as his skin to his own 
spiritual frame. His idealism was realism. His aflfir- 
mations were ruddy, and his negations were never pale. 
His saintly soul was steeped in reverence and infantile 
innocence. He stood in awe of God and of his own 
soul. In no man did conscience tread a loftier stage. 
One even said of him, "He was kept from the highest 
goodness by his love of rectitude." His estimate of 
human nature had a logical tie with his philanthropy. 
He espoused betimes the cause of the slave. He had 
condemned the harsh speech of the Abolitionists. But 
when Samuel J. May inquired of him, " If they speak 
ill, why do not you speak well ? " he meekly answered, 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 359 

*' I ought to have spoken before." When he and 
Garrison met in aniit}', it was said, "Mercy and 
truth are met together : righteousness and peace have 
kissed each other." There was no doubt a moral qual- 
ity not only in the impetuosity of some, but in the 
hesitancy of other good men, at the outbreak of the 
antislavery strife ; and to this honest ethical pause 
justice has not yet been done. But Channing once in 
motion was no more considerate and charitable than 
he was brave. When the City Government of Boston 
had refused the use of Faneuil Hall to celebrate the 
martyrdom of the printer Lovejo}', editor of the "Al- 
ton Observer," in Illinois, who had fallen defending 
his press, then, b}' an appeal to the people which made 
the streets ring be^'ond the toll of bells or rattle of the 
wheels, Channing constrained the municipal authority 
to recede, and the old Cradle of Libert}' rocked again. 

M}^ motive is not to recommend a partisan, which, 
either in politics or religion, Channing never was. Like 
Milton, he was an Arian in the earlier time ; but all moot 
points of belief, and the idea of Christ's pre-existence 
among them, lost import with him, and at length, be- 
fore his engrossment in humane interests, faded away. 

The tributes to him come from all quarters now. 
The German Lutheran, Baron Bunsen, in his well- 
rounded characterization, calls him " in humanity a 
Greek, in citizenship a Roman, in Christianity an apos- 
tle," adding, " If such a one is not a Christian apostle 
of the presence of God in man, I know of none.'* 
Dean Stanley, lately in this countr}', requested to be 
taken to Mount Auburn to see the tomb of Channing. 
Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, expressed the same 



.S60 PORTRAITS. 

wish. Like the bee-lines that meet over the hive, tliese 
directions of famous men from diverse latitudes joined 
at one spot. 

In general, I designate Channing not as a naturalist, 
but rather as a supernaturalist. With Plato and Dr. Ed- 
ward Beecher, he thought the soul to be older than the 
body. On miracles, which he never ruled out, he came, 
however, at last not to lay the stress. He told me he 
thought the works in nature were of more worth. But 
he relished no flouting of the supernatural aureole 
around the Master's head, — the halo which that head 
rays out, and which no science can disperse. Indeed, 
has not myth a place as well as fact ; and is not the 
hand profane that would rend it awa}'? As well blow 
out the atmosphere as the superhuman. We may 
drive the angels from the Bible, when we send the witches 
in '• Macbeth" from the blasted heath! A persuasion 
haunts us of that Infinite Realitj', which the rumor of 
apparitions, on whatever ground accredited or discred- 
ited, represents, and which we obstinatel}' believe ought 
and some time will be true ! The supernatural is that 
which, expelled with whatever fork of the understand- 
ing, nature will return to with inevitable attraction and 
unappeasable zest. But Channing, with all his faith, 
could not be irrational ; and the vicarious atonement by 
an infinite sacrifice, which is to many excellent Chris- 
tians so unspeakably dear, he could not abide, as it 
offended his moral sense. 

Humanit3^ was his crown. He told me how consist- 
ent he thought his view of the dignity of human nature 
was with personal humilit3% "He loved love," sa3's 
Balzac of one of his heroes. Channing was a lover of 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 361 

amity and peace, and of Noah Worcester, the apostle 
of peace. He said of the portraits and busts made of 
himself, that he cared less for the intellectual expres- 
sion than that the}^ should beam good-will to his fellow- 
creatures. The sight or thought of inhumanit}' he was 
too tender to bear, and he hoped he might be excused 
from perusing details of cruelt}^, the particulars of pain. 
He said that the slaveholder was very much an abstrac- 
tion to him, whereupon Garrison asked, "Is he an ab- 
straction to the slave? " He was a prophet of the soul, 
and judged that the highest nature could not, more than 
the lowest, leave its appointed track. Such a man as the 
historian Prescott thought him a sublime and visionary 
generalizer ; but he put his. notion with genuine force : 
it struck a million minds, and is not a spent ball 3'et. 
He originated a new wa}^ of regarding mankind, al- 
though, when he could not manage a special case, he 
was glad to be helped b}^ the minister- at-large, at the 
birth of whose work he assisted. Pierpont, the prac- 
tical reformer, said, " Throw him from his protections 
into the street, and he would die." But, no more than 
our chronometer or mirror, could we so cast him out. 
One of his brethren called him a Jacobin, and he only 
smiled. He headed a petition for the pardon of Ab- 
ner Kneeland for blasphemy, which the present writer 
signed, drawing from a Judge in his congregation the 
observation, "It is the only mistake our 3'oung min- 
ister has made." His faith in the soundness of the 
human root is the prime condition of all faith in the 
planter, God. 

To whom does this pearl of character belong? To 
no psLvty. Diverse sects would appropriate signal ex- 



862 PORTRAITS. 

cellence, as the old cities disputed where Homer was 
born. Dean Stanley puts Christ's wisdom in his refusal 
to be classified. M. Renan, on being asked, in 1870, if 
Prussia would be absorbed in Germany, answered that 
he could not tell, as M. Bismarck had not yet submitted 
himself to analysis. Swedenborgians have claimed 
Channing's spirit. He had affinities with Whitefield 
and Wesley, Anthony Woolman and George Fox. A 
great soul transcends orders, and is a law to itself. It 
is more fast in righteousness than an engine to the rails 
or a planet on its path. AVe, in this land, have had 
occasion to see that there is in human nature itself not 
onl}^ freedom, but the higher law. Channing's mind 
was a pervasive force. He corresponded with Henry 
Clay, in private, to discover at first hand the facts of 
human bondage, though the letters that passed have 
never found their way into print. But a Kentucky 
planter bound up Channing's public one to Clay with 
blank leaves, for entries of his own reflections, showing 
the hold on his heart of perhaps unwelcome truth. 

This surpassing power was lodged in a bod}' so in- 
valid that its tenant could scarce endure the grasp of 
a hand. But Ichabod Nichols said, onl}' on such con- 
ditions of sensitiveness and delicacy could a Channing 
be had. But the tenderness was firmness too. Chan- 
ning was lofty and lowly, like a branching elm. As a 
solution is the greatest potency" of a drug, so in that hu- 
mility, which is God's door of entrance to the soul, his 
dignity was solved. There is something in every thing 
save our conceit, and of that he was devoid. 

He was taken ill in a hotel, in Bennington, Ver- 
mont, October 2, 1842. As the vital flame in him 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 363 

burned low, he said, "I have received man}' mes- 
sages from the spirit." He had, while he hved, got at 
people especiall3', he said, through their voices. His 
whisper was his last communication. With declining 
day his countenance sank. Being assisted, he turned 
to the window at the east. The curtains were drawn 
back, and the light fell on his face. He gazed over the 
valley's and wooded hills, and none but God and the 
spirit knew when his soul passed to that prospect 
which the horizon could not bound. Tajlor, the Bethel- 
preacher, and his great compeer, described the scene, — 
the sunset after such a morning glow, the clambering 
vines dropping their leaves outside, and the loving 
watchers over what, like a leaf, loosened from the tree 
of life within, — and, at the close of a sort of vocal 
requiem, the great Methodist cried or sang, "Walk in 
the Light." The French Laboula3'e, finding one of 
Channing's books at a stall in Paris, said, " I have dis- 
covered a man." Born, April 7, 1780, Channing's cen- 
tennial commemoration, for his country and race, will 
come this yeav. 

The fact is easily explained that the image of Chan- 
ning in the memor}' of scholars and in the common 
mind is unsmiling and severe, more of the puritan than 
the pilgrim t3'pe. At the beginning of his ministr}- his 
health was broken b}' overwork, and he never recovered 
from the nervous wreck. He had to gather the rem- 
nants of his strength as fuel to keep the vital spark 
alive, and nurse and warm himself ever after as best 
he could. But there was no overplus of high spirits to 
sparkle or radiate ; and his engagement in his themes 
was too constant and intense to spare a morsel of his 



364 PORTRAITS. 

energy for sport. After a brief salutation, the visitor 
was taken into the laboratory at once. If he was not in- 
terested in the experiments on hand, or was a lion-hunter 
ambitious for the acquaintance of a great man, the case 
was simpl}' one with whicli Channing could not affect 
any interest and was quite, helpless to deal. He was 
an observer, and wanted to get others' observations. 
He was all the time considering high matters, and could 
not understand any one whose object was not, like his, 
to seek the truth. How reverentially he waited for 
every one's contribution of thought, till in his silence 
he seemed freezing cold ! Any attempt at merriment 
drew from him onh' a passing wintry smile, like that of 
the Arctic regions at a glint of the sun. To no man 
was life more serious, dut}^ more solemn, or the call 
more urgent to improve the time. It has been said of 
the veteran Dr. Riple}', that he was "good at a fire." 
Channing was disabled during the last forty 3^ears of 
his life for an}' but the most cautious muscular exer- 
tion ; and the marvel is, not that he was incompetent 
to any feat of bodil}^ strength, and afraid of the least 
exposure, but that his sobriety of body and mind was 
mixed with such good cheer. Morose he never was. 
Long after the prime of bodily vigor was passed, he 
would, in hours of relaxation, play and wrestle with 
his son, and stretch out his arms for the lad, of whom 
he made a companion, to run into across the floor, or 
'tell him stories, that grew toward their climax, with cor- 
responding illustration of characters and figures in the 
speech, by drawings with a pencil on a slate, — which 
ended usually in a donkey. But intellectual inquir}^ took 
possession of him more and more everj^ daj^ he lived. If 



CHANNING, THE PREACHER. 865 

there can be a passion not onlj^ for persons but for the 
truth, no man that ever breathed burned with it more. 
His faculties for study were rare. We respect men 
that speak from conviction, as none that listened to 
him could doubt that he did. But his immortalizing 
peculiarit}^ was less that of the genius than of the saint. 
It is the most cheering sign of hope for mankind that, 
be^^ond all ingenuit}' or depth of argument, consecration 
of talent wins their regard. Jonathan Edwards lives 
in our honor more b}' his unworldly temper than b}" his 
essay on the Freedom of the Will ; and Channing will be 
a name in the calendar and on the canon when all his 
works may be forgotten. His thought was a river and 
a fountain too ; not a canal cut through him, but a run- 
ning stream. His Missouri arose in his own mind. 
Dr. Wa^'land remarked how he was transformed out of 
apparent coldness and reserve when he wrote or spoke. 
It was indeed the difference of a cannon-ball in the 
armory and in the air. It is our faith that such a pro- 
jectile can never stop. 



366 PORTRAITS. 



ni. 

BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 

AMONG recent American authors Horace Bushnell 
was one of the foremost in devoting his genius 
completely to Theolog}^, that queen of the sciences, yet 
so uncertain in her character and unstable in her reign, 
and never more than in these days needing some master- 
mind at her court. All the former schemes have been 
shaken, but none appears to take their place. The loud 
demand for a rational religion results in no agreement or 
generall}^ accepted creed, even among those by whom it 
is sought. Channing protests against and in some points 
convicts the old schedule, but he formulates nothing new. 
Parker's ' ' Theism " was the weakest of his works ; and 
our modern Liberalism, so called, is so untheologic that it 
waits for proof that God exists. It disowns the Church, 
and would divorce it from the State. It denies the 
foundation of morals in parts of its practice, and in its 
theorj^ holds it in suspense. Horace Bushnell, a man con- 
genitally compelled to see all things in the light of rea- 
son, espoused at the beginning and maintained to the end 
the cause of the Orthodox faith. It has had no other ex- 
pounder of equal genius in our time. He was, however, 
no such severe dialectician as Calvin. While he would 
be logical, the forms of logic he despised. His method 
was that of suggestion. He was more a poet than an 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 367 

advocate. No man drew out his discriminations in 
sliarper lines. But in his nature underneath every line 
of argument was mvstical pietj' for a daily refuge, and 
no romance charmed him like a book of prayer. He 
had that charit}^ for his opponents which sprang from an 
understanding of thek positions as well as from the ten- 
derness of his own heart. He knew wh}' and how one 
could differ from him ; and his imagination, alike fine 
and broad, showed him on what ground had stood any 
and every scheme of religion that had prevailed in the 
world. The political formulas, saj's Carlyle, were swal- 
lowed b}' Mirabeau ; and Bushnell declared he could 
take down all the theological statements with no lack 
of edification. 

But he was a force and factor in our New England 
religion. Whenever a thinker comes in any sectarian 
fellowship he brings a crisis, disturbs the communion, 
and starts a revolution until his ideas are outgrown or 
absorbed. But Bushnell said of the chief antagonist of 
his views that he but wished to put him into "an attitude 
of comprehensive repugnance ; " so devoid of personal 
heat and bitterness his own character and constitution 
required him to be. Yet he was as keen as he was kind. 
His eye, while soft and receptive, had the glitter of a 
spear or of a diamond's edge. It laughed before his 
lips smiled, and was merry while the other features were 
still grave, but scintillated and shrewdh' penetrated to 
the point. What shafts of wit and humor he habituall}^ 
shot ! When a doctor of divinit}' told him that he had 
been "laying out the Presb3'terian doctrine" to the 
present writer, Bushnell replied, "You mean, I sup- 
pose, that 3'ou have been putting a shroud on it ; for 



868 PORTRAITS. 

that's what they do when they lay things out!" He 
hated sanctimonious mimicry. No dogma that had 
become a stereot3'ped mechanical recitative was safe 
from his stroke. He condemned it if it was customary 
and trite. Every article, to be accepted or pass with 
him, must be restated and reformed, and have the word 
of the latest intelligence for its countersign. He was a 
'' son of Agamemnon terrible to purify." He averred 
that he was not a Calvinist ; but said he thought " a 
Calvinist could be a Christian," which Father Taylor 
denied, as he inquired how such Calvinists as might be 
admitted to lieaven b}^ an arbitrary decree, irrespective 
of moral conduct, would like it, should the Master come 
along and '^ turn the stick round" with a verdict as 
absolute as was the first, yet that should lodge them in 
hell ! To this imputed uncertainty of a salvation on 
principle, purely elective and wholly unearned, Bush- 
nell replied by heartily joining in the Bethel-preacher's 
well-grounded and very sober fun. 

Being utterly sincere, incapable of sophistr}^, and 
instantly discarding in his views any unsoundness of 
which he was aware, how then did he present his case, 
to save the truth and Orthodoxy too ? I can testify on 
one point at least. The dispute about everlasting pun- 
ishment, that rends the Congregational bod}' to-day, 
was easily solved in his mind by the belief that the per- 
sistently wicked would not in the future world survive 
their sin. This opinion is cited from private conversation 
in the latter jea,rs of his life, and may never have been 
by him publicly preached. Yet my interest in the sub- 
ject, as in the man, renders impossible any mistake in 
my recollection of the emphasis with which he affirmed 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 369 

that '' every thing looks as if they who are unreclaimed 
from transgression must go down and go out, and no 
more be." But this Darwinian doctrine of the survival 
of the fittest, carried beyond the gi*ave, shocks the con- 
sciousness of Christendom, and b}' no church is it yet 
received. Only an individual and numerical, not moral 
or spiritual, immortality is still held. But few think any 
individual is perishable. No heres}' could be more 
flagrant in am' sect than to doubt the everlasting per- 
sonal continuance alike of the giant in iniquit}' and of 
the still-born child. But a crisis is at hand to test the 
thought, which was not Bushnell's alone. The motive to 
virtue of an eternal perdition for everj' particular share- 
holder in the depravity of the race is slowly and fatally 
being withdrawn, leaving a vacuum for the conscience 
which some other and better incentive must fill, if we 
would not have the motive power fail and the human 
train stop in all conscious motion to a future destinj'. 
What inducement to well-doing could be so wholesome 
and strong as to suspend upon faithfulness, instead of 
an indestructible entity, all our hope of being at all? 
What expectation of any proper immortality can the}'" 
have who are not immortal in their thoughts and affec- 
tions now ? In our experience alone is any fact what- 
soever sure ; and before heaven is in our vision, it must 
be in our heart. Unfelt as a realitj^, it cannot be hon- 
estly preached as a faith ; and so we read of the Son of 
Man that he was in heaven wliile he stayed and seemed 
to be on the earth. 

Dr. Bushnell was a Trinitarian. He tried to show 
that a threefold divinity is not only taught in Scripture, 
but is credible in itself and conformable to human want. 

24 



370 PORTRAITS. 

But he held that the substance of Deity is one, and only 
the manifestation triune. If, however, in the composi- 
tion of the Trinity the essence be abandoned and the 
expression kept, it loses not only its importance but its 
ground. When we come to the showings of Deit}^ how 
all number fails, and counting must be given up ! Three 
or three thousand in our arithmetic can never surround or 
ascend to all the jets from the infinite spring. If not a 
triad but simple unity be the subsistence of God, no 
Trinitarian theory touches bottom, or more than resem- 
bles a deep-sea line beyond soundings and dangling in 
the waves. If the Father be the first term, the Son must 
be not only second but secondary ; and how could the 
first be Father unless he were alread}' the third, that is, 
the Spirit too, as by Jesus he is called ? In all parent- 
age childhood is implied ; but childhood is the offspring 
or procreation, and that which all earthl}' parentage 
figures is unbegotten and unborn. 

The trouble with Trinitarianism — and it is a diflficulty 
more formidable and threatening ever}^ day — is that it 
leaves Nature out ; and Nature will not consent either 
to be omitted or to remain under the ban. The original 
curse laid upon her is antiquated long ago. Nature with 
every step and discovery of science becomes in all sys- 
tems a factor of greater weight ; and the knowledge of 
Nature is reinforced by that love of Nature, distinctively 
a modern sentiment, so informing all pietj^, as well as 
poetry and music and pictorial art, that whatever spec- 
ulation may presume to affront and wrestle with it is 
sure to be discredited, shoved aside, or overthrown. 
What then has Nature, this last and not untrustworthy 
witness, to sa}' about God? 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 371 

Eat let lis not slur the previous question, whether 
Nature is not in theolog}' a term to be altogether sup- 
pressed. Science or the scientific man, it is perhaps 
correctly said, knows nothing of God. But Nature's 
meaning is b}" no scientist ever divined and drawn out. 
Many things in nature we can scarce conceive that God, 
save under necessities which our thought cannot fathom, 
although our faith must accommodate, could directly in- 
tend or do. Natural evil, as with a whip of scorpions, 
drives us back to find the witness of his justice and 
goodness in our own conscience and heart. Philosophy 
joins with religion, as witness here. We denounce Cal- 
vinism as impious and absurd. But how far pessimism, 
the last word of German speculation, in its malediction 
on our Mother Earth suckling us at her breast, has out- 
stripped- an}' indictment by the Genevan divine ! To 
Dr. Bushnell Nature is hardl}' more than a phantom, 
the clothing of a god, or the shadow of a man. He 
never lies do#n quite content in her maternal lap. The 
stars are to him but a larger spread of tinsel or shine 
of gilding ; and, in the case of the Christ, he comes near 
to abolishing human nature too, as he makes nothing to 
be significant in Jesus but the divinity which he is and 
reveals. The humanit}' of the Lord is only appearance 
and veneer, a frame for the picture or a setting for the 
gem. BushnelFs most remarkable and elaborate essay 
is a monograph inscribed with this view. Did he have 
an}' mistrust that he was thus dropping out of his be- 
loved Trinit}' the indispensable equivalent of the second 
term ? In his "Nature and the Supernatural" he does so 
take up the line betwixt the two that it becomes as hard 
to distinguish them in his treatment as it is to many per- 



372 PORTRAITS. 

sons to part them in fact ! But until the boundary is 
discovered all miracle will be in doubt ; and probably- he 
beliieved in no miracle as a violation of law. 

But for such disparagement or counting out Nature 
has her revenge. She forces upon our author, in all 
his acute profundit}', the rehabilitation of herself. He 
finds a retroactive effect, as b}' an ex post facto law, of 
the curse of Adam's sin on living forms of reptile and 
fish before the first man was fashioned on the earth. 
The deformity of such a creature, for example, as the 
flounder was in veritable anticipation of the ugliness of 
the human fall, as if, to borrow the criticism of another, 
Nature had misshapen herself with a fit or shudder 
beforehand at the consequences of Adam's eating, a 
myriad of ages after, the forbidden fruit. 

But this supersubtle reasoner concerning the native 
corruption of the race, in his discourses on " Christian 
Nurture," struck at the doctrine of total depravity the 
heaviest blow it has ever received. He perceived that 
some idea of human nature must be held. The Liberal 
theology has dealt Tvith men as individnals, so many 
souls personally responsible, each one. Orthodoxy has 
at least grappled with the real problem of the wdiole 
body of humanit}', or the organic solidarit}' of the race. 
Despite the Prophet's rebuke to such as quoted for their 
own exculpation the proverb, "the fathers have eaten 
sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." 
The latest investigations, with no ecclesiastical bias, 
only confirm heredity as a universal law. But Bushnell 
insisted on a working of that law not only as degrad- 
ing, but, through religious inheritance, benign. He held 
that it is in the Church a hurtful superstition to base 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 373 

redemption on an}- sudden conversion, as b}^ a new 
birth, cliildren being regenerate in their devout parent- 
age without special prodig}' of grace, the need of which 
in everj'^ case the CongregationaUst and Baptist orders 
have so vehement!}' affirmed. His elucidation hnd cour- 
ageous reassertion of this so well-taken point after a 
long ecclesiastical dulness made the Church ring all its 
bells once more ! But at the touch of reproach and per- 
secution he did not waver or flinch. His 3'ear of con- 
troversy on this subject within the borders of his own 
brotherhood made the romantic period of his life, and 
proved, as in the furnace, the metal of which he was 
made. The volume of sermons, which were disserta- 
tions on the Church as being a nurserj^ and not a 
revival camp or rink, was the most valuable of his pub- 
lications, for all parties in our New England Christen- 
dom of thirt}^ years ago. It called alike Unitarian and 
Trinitarian individualism to order. It broke down in 
part and for a while the partition-wall between the 
two sides in this community. It was a new atone- 
ment, and no discussions of any thesis of diverse belief 
have had an interest among us so lively or lasting so 
long. The pages of Bushnell devoted to them have a 
fresh stimulus and generous nutriment still, as of com- 
munion bread and wine. 

His repeated attempts to rationalize the doctrine of 
God's reconcilement to man, or propitiation by vica- 
rious suffering, were masterly pleas for positions hard of 
defence, and which he realh' forsook in undertaking to 
maintain, so satisfying neither party in the strife. He 
was like a law3^er whose damaging admissions after the 
most ingenious argument are ruinous to his client's 



374 PORTRAITS. 

case. In his reconstruction nothing of the notion 
which he was retained to demonstrate was left. Cal- 
vinism found in him, indeed, its vanishing point, and 
Orthodoxy became heterodox b}^ every plain issue it 
had, according to the Liberals, ever made with rea- 
son and the moral sense. "Hast thou appealed unto 
Caesar? Unto Caesar shalt thou go," said Festus to 
Paul. The Caesar to whose tribunal every word from 
Bushnell summoned the popular creed was the ethical 
reason, and the consequence was that every dogma that 
was tried at this bar was either altered or given up. 
This doom on the old body of divinity reminds us of 
Ariel's song to Ferdinand in " The Tempest," 

" Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
Of his bones are coral made; 
Those are pearls that were his eyes ; 

Nothing of him that doth fade 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange. 
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: 
Ding-dong. 
Hark ! now I hear them, — ding-dong, bell." 

In Dr. Bushnell's occasional discourses, where he holds 
in hand no theologic prescription or brief, his genius is 
most happily displayed. The Phi Beta Kappa oration 
"vvas perhaps the most perfect of its kind in our day. 
The sermon on " Barbarism the First Danger," that on 
"Unconscious Influence," and the "Address on Music " 
are specimens of original power which in the pulpit of 
any denomination or in the lyceum are seldom matched. 
In the now two centuries of puritanic tradition in this 
land no man has appeared since Jonathan Edwards 
whose vision of the point in debate went more deeply, 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 875 

or whose vigor was more conspicuous in unfolding its 
vital contents. We have had famous orators in the 
Orthodox desk, who could, on occasion, brave!}' spurn 
what hampered them like a ball and chain, and dash 
forward into a larger field of survey. But anon they 
would retreat to the familiar repetitions and sj^mbolical 
books of the synagogue to which they belonged ! Bush- 
nell held whatever ground he conquered, occupied in 
force the fortress he won, and was not only a theo- 
logian, but a devotee and a divine. From his child- 
hood, through all his boyhood and college-days, he 
illustrated that descent of sacred influence whose law 
he set forth. Eunice and Lois no more sent it down to 
Timoth}' than it came progenitally to him, so that the 
main theme of his life was an heirloom in his blood. 

The increasing value of Nature in the theological 
sum is what mainly now we have to take into account. 
Once matter, or the stuflT of Nature, was so evil that 
God must not soil his hands with it, but intrust to 
some lower deity, or demiurgus, the creation of the 
world ; and afterwards the whole structure as finished 
was so hurt b}^ sin, like a tool or machine broken the 
moment it came into actual use, that it went bj' default, 
and was set aside. In the modern sense of an entity 
or unit}', idealized or abstractly' conceived, — unless 
Cicero be an exception to this remark, — Nature did 
not exist to the ancient mind, sacred or profane. But 
recently she has arisen, like one with confused senses wak- 
ing from sleep. Her name nowhere, with our full mean- 
ing, is found even in Holy Writ. But now she claims 
to be the offspring of God. She scorns the possibihty 
of being, in herself or her offspring, totally depraved. 



376 POUTRAITS. 

She has shown that she has a constitution whose power 
has not been measured, or health ruined, or proportions 
gauged. Her frame, at every successive glance of her 
children who have learned to call her mother, discloses 
new beauty, with a promise to cancel all deformity, and 
a harmon}' to resolve ever}^ discordant note. That good 
Churchman, John Ruskin, who under the title of art 
has written with unmatched eloquence of her grandeur 
and charm, recognizes in no part of her fashion the 
ancient theological ban. He smites the actual sinner, 
whom ancestral apolog}" cannot excuse. He describes 
him as, in the English ritual, " concealing the manner 
of his sin from men, while confessing the quantity of it 
to God." 

Nature, once esteemed as nothing but a positive hin- 
drance to piety or a minus amount in the mathematics of 
our religious means, at present, witli every art for her 
witness, is vindicating herself from past insult and dis- 
inheritance. Her previous nonentity has among scien- 
tists become the only entity in perhaps the majorit}^ of 
modern minds. From cold and empty zero she has 
ascended what measureless degrees ! There is no limit 
to this scale. Such a thing as literal supernature, which 
Bushnell identified with spirit, is ever}- where dislodged. 
By no imagination can it be clearly grasped. What is 
pure spirit but an image for absolute spirit supplied by 
the wind? It does not in fact exist. The world is 
God's habit ; but he cannot take off his dress. A naked 
Deity he never was ! Why should he disrobe who never 
lies down to sleep ? Without this self- woven atomic gar- 
ment, tough and vast and man}' -colored, which he wears 
and cannot wear out, he was never seen to go forth ; 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 377 

nor as distinct from it shall we behold him even in 
heaven. We have, in our little time-span, crept under 
the border of it on earth. But for that cover we could 
not have a moment's life and breath ; and, though we be 
stripped of this fleshly raiment when we die, the same old 
nature or matter must, in some finer stjde, furnish our 
ascension robes, if such we are indeed to have. Nature 
clothes us for our cradle below, and will reclothe us for 
our journe}' hence, as a mother does her children, be 
they infant or grown up. When we converse with a 
noble soul, a monad like Channing or Bushnell, we feel 
that, in the language of Paul, it is not to '^ be unclothed, 
but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up 
of life." To what better uses can this outward material, 
in all its strong and subtile textures, be put, than as 
the vehicle, or to afford successive vehicles, to a loving 
and adoring spirit, to a musing and scrutinizing intelli- 
gence, and to a resolute and all-projecting will ? What 
finer service in the counsels of the Most High, among 
grasses and flowers, animal organisms, sublimit}^ in the 
hills, or graceful shape and changing hue in "the 
plighted clouds," can it render, than to comfort con- 
tinuously a thinking and aspiring nature of intrinsic 
superiority to itself, to guard it against blasts in the 
dark valley, and repair it from all the wastes of time ? 
Wherefore does it hint an inestimable potency in the 
lightning or the thunder-crash, and wrap up in molecules 
an enormous force, but to hint capacit}^ in its delicate 
drawers for all angelic and immortal demands? When 
matter is mended into a pen to write words for us on 
the other side of the sea, or shaped into a tongue to 
talk oui* messages into listening ears scores of miles 



378 PORTRAITS. 

away, and without leaving our chair to communicate our 
wishes either to a distant town or a neighboring street, 
does it not justif}- our cordial apprehension that it is 
an eternal agent and our appointed servant for ever, 
still to wait upon us when all space shall be but our 
sitting-room and what we call time shall be no more ? 
Ofttimes we are shrewdly pinched w^ith it, and in its 
grip heavily thrown ; but a notion stubbornl}- clings to 
us that we cannot be vanquished at last, or confounded 
with any of its wrecks. Not seldom in some warm and 
pleasing shape it may contrive our destruction, and lure 
us to the pit. But to glorify us with grace of a resisted 
temptation or a repented transgression is its real and 
ultimate design. "No cross, no crown" is a sacred 
proverb ; and when we see crosses wrought into dia- 
dems on the heads of kings, the transfiguration of all 
calamity is s3'mbolized and foreseen. 

Materialism or naturalism is not to-day among us here 
in vain, albeit the apparent dominant and dismal belief 
of the age. It awaits its transformation, like a worm 
out of its skinu}' crib or a body in its unlighted tomb. 
There must be some collateral intent in the obstinacy 
with which even the gross dogma of " a resurrection of 
the body " clings to the confession of the Church. It sig- 
nifies the inabilit}^ of our thought to envisage any being, 
human or divine, without form ! If we are to rise, it 
must be not only with some essence, but with some sub- 
stance as well. ISo only does it seem to us that we can 
escape the prison of the body, and avoid the voracity 
of the grave. If rising in another form, or, in the 
grand Scripture-phrase, " the resurrection of the dead," 
were substituted in cathedral-chancels and in the mis- 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 379 

named Apostles' Creed for "resurrection of the bodj^" 
those would, without offence to reason, be a furtherance 
of faith. 

We think, accordingh', that in his endeavor to draw a 
line betwixt nature and the supernatural Dr. Bushnell 
has no satisf^'ing success. To some of his descriptions 
does not a remnant of the old contempt for nature 
adhere ? If all of spirit, if the element of prayer and 
even the action of the human will, be supernatural, as 
he would represent, what, indeed, that is natural in any 
worthy sense is left? In the processes of our experi- 
menter's laboratorj' Nature has, in fact, been incremated 
or calcined, and only a dead powder of dregs or cinder 
of ashes remains. She was but a sort of serpent which 
Aaron's rod has devoured ; or as insubstantial as Berkeley 
makes all that is external to be in his philosophy' ; or as 
that magical Prospero, who is Shakspeare, in his speech 
at the funeral obsequies of matter, pictures and wipes 
out the world. Rather, is there not some confusion in 
the masterly' statement of our theologian, who is a 
psalmist too ? Idealism or realism as a system we may 
understand. But the spheres which we confound, we 
destroy. Perhaps a metaphysic, more haz}' than pro- 
found, hanging over our author's exposition of this par- 
ticular subject, ma}- account for the comparatively slight 
influence of a dissertation perhaps abler, as it is more 
voluminous, than an}- other of his single efforts, while 
less marked than others of them with justness of view 
and a sturd}- common-sense. 

But we so respect his extraordinar}- faculty as to ap- 
prehend that what he could not do cannot be done, and 
that the natural and the supernatural ma}- in no wise be 



380 POKTKAITS. 

cut apart. As things not conterminous or interfering, 
they interpenetrate, 3'et do not mix. Do we predicate 
the supernatural and the superhuman of God ? But God 
most of all pervades, as he enfolds Nature and humanity 
too. "The Lord," says the Swedenborgian, " is a man." 
But he is Nature too. She is the mediator more than 
any one man can be ; and the doom of failure is on all 
attempts, even the most astute, to cast out her name as 
evil or as naught in the communion of saints or in the 
work of redeeming love. She will not evacuate the prem- 
ises, but will hold on more firmly every day, whatever 
hypothesis-maker may bid her go. Unresentful of his 
foolish and puny plan, she continues to supply language 
for the liberal setting forth of his thought ! Her em- 
blems are the fashions of his literary costume. Out of 
her armory he gathers the weapons which he turns against 
her breast. From her ample vestry come both the color 
and pattern of the st3'le he employs for her abuse, as 
her wardrobe will give, without money or purchase- 
price, his outfit when he shall quit his present abode in 
her precincts for any other or higher of her endless and 
boundless scenes. That she will always be our intro- 
duction and introducer to spirit is a noble suspicion 
we cannot shun. Could we clean her out of her own 
premises, or be clear of her ourselves, no longer were we 
ourselves ! We cannot pare matter down to spirit, and 
we cannot merge spirit in matter ; but when soul is con- 
ceived as separate from form, or the name of spiritualism 
is bestowed on the circle-manifestations to sheer sense, 
or the incarnation is limited as a prodigy to a single 
historic case, we may well call upon materialism, bald 
and downright, to restore the disturbed balance, and 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 381 

acknowledge our debt to the materialist, who at least 
holds that something is extant, without which the infi- 
nite were lost. 

Were miracles possible, in the sense of nullified laws, 
the}' must perforce be wrought in the stuflf of Nature, 
and thus keep some of her statutes, whatever others they 
break, so picking and choosing the marvellous, which 
the phantoms of dead men in the dusk}^ seance make 
out of the whole cloth. But God need not depart from 
his character of lawgiver to be lover too ; and if men 
be translated or transformed to angels, science can 
specify no law which would thus be annulled. Rever- 
ent waiting, not curiosit}', is here in place, and he who 
begins with inquisitiveness will not end with pra3'er. 

But all the reports that science has made, or ever will 
render in, must in no wise be considered as identical 
with or equivalent to Nature herself. Science but traces 
some part or section of her structural mode, which is 
but the outside of her method ; and it is incompetent to 
codify all her laws, to map her operations, or exhaust 
her contents. Science will be for ever disabled for 
such tasks, inasmuch as to other than the scientific 
faculties Nature appeals, and her entire significance 
can even be apprehended onl}' by the whole soul. Her 
summons to our understanding is her least and faintest 
address. She accosts every feeling. She greets and 
stirs our imagination, she arouses our wonder, and she 
oflTers an altar for our prayer ; and the heart dedicated 
to any object, visible or unseen, is provided b}' her with 
countless correspondences and cipher despatches of its 
sentiment, and has never found her last token of its 
worship and love. Homer and Shakspeare and Dante 



882 PORTRAITS. 

and Goethe are more profound interpreters of what she 
intends and would sa}- than even Newton and Kepler 
and Humboldt and Laplace ; and we shall go to Words- 
worth rather than to Huxley now to have her riddle 
read. 

** Throned on the sun's descending car, 
What power unseen diffuses far 

This tenderness of mind 1 
What genius smiles on yonder flood ? 
What god, in whispers from tlie wood, 
Bids every thought be kind 1 " 

On one of those spring days when the Lord seems to 
keep open house, is there not in Nature's liturgy indeed 
such a collect as this ? Does she not chant our ascrip- 
tions, repeat our doxologies, and make the real re- 
sponses in our service of praise? If she be not alive, 
but onl}^ the echo or sounding-board of our affections, 
yet her reverberation intensifies and prolongs every cry 
of devotion or compassion, every whisper of trust or 
lisp of hope from the human breast. 

Dr. Bushnell was not insensible to her sustenance 
and succor for the diverse emotions breathed b}^ the 
solitary' and excommunicated, or b}' the socially jaded 
and sorety persecuted, into her ever-hospitable ear. But 
his theological situation and antecedents restricted him, 
native singer though he were, to little use of her as a 
religious instructor and ally. His ratiocination hung as 
a veil between her and his ej^es ; and we may find one 
defect of the popular creed in general in its scanty 
draughts on her so precious fund. 

In this instance my criticism, however inadequate, of 
the theologian, must pass instead of any full portraiture 
of the man. But for dehcacy to the living I might 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 883 

match the gifts and achievements of this Orthodox stu- 
dent with some sketch of scholar!}^ talent and learning on 
the Liberal side. I deem it better to let his picture hang 
by itself, as that of one who spent his life in profound 
reflection on religious themes, going from barefoot dig- 
ging for exercise in the actual soil to more serious exer- 
citation, pen in hand, at his desk ; with little society of 
his peers, and seldom any companion to cope with on 
equal terms, and with still less amusement or recreation 
of a ver}' enlivening sort, 3'et as cheerful and merry as 
he was heroic at each sober task, ever bus}' and preoc- 
cupied with some intellectual proposition, or, as he told 
me, taking a Park with him to bed, — he having been much 
concerned with securing to the cit}' of Hartford, where 
he lived and preached, the fine Common that goes by 
that name, — and when, toward the last, he was too 
weak to walk, wanting, if any one of his household had 
been willing to answer his inquir}' for that purpose, to 
put on his boots and go out with a visitor who had 
called. 

Dr. Bushnell for friendly fellowship was one of the 
most winsome, as in his appearance he was one of the 
handsomest of men. Nature had struck out his face, 
and never again used the same die. It resembled the 
stamp of Channing's countenance, with the same deli- 
cac}'' of feature and deep-cut orbit for the organs of vis- 
ion, and an equal spiritualization of the traits, till every 
line and atom of flesh served for expression. He had 
greater vivacit}' and mobilit}', and a recurring humor 
that had at lenorth almost faded out of the look of 
the great Unitarian divine. Both alike were vota- 
ries of ideas ; and both grew younger and fresher the 



384 PORTBAITS. 

longer they lived, I feel often still the glance of Bush- 
nell, so searching and kindlj', and am conscious of his 
presence and influence in m}' mind ; and I find in his 
writing a complementarj^ color of close and cogent argu- 
ment for Channing's more generalizing method, as well 
as his less pla3'ful wit. He had also that satisfaction in 
consecration to duty, independent of reputation and ap- 
plause, which marks all the truly great. If the true 
author or artist did not find his joy in his business, or if 
he had to wait for fair remuneration in order to be happ}^, 
he would lack comfort indeed, were he not even, in the 
Apostle's phrase, "of all men most miserable;" for 
wealth and honor have but a cursor}- and cold greeting 
for supreme merit on the canvas of the one or on the 
page of the other. When Moltke, the matchless Prus- 
sian strategist, who fights his battles with pins in the 
map before he conquers the enemy in the field, and re- 
hearses struggle and victory, long before the time of con- 
flict, in his capacious brain, was receiving his abundant 
dividend from the general glory of the arm}" for a signal 
success over the Austrian hosts, he said, "I have a 
hatred for all fulsome praise ; it completeh^ upsets me 
for the whole day." Let not our living benefactors or 
their surviving friends lament that for services in peace, 
more precious than trophies of war, the unappreciative 
general public pa3's them honor in small declarations or 
installs as its favorites inferior men ! Flattery is inter- 
ruption of study and diversion from our aflS'air ; and 
scarce ever does any vivid eulogy discriminate or come 
up to the worth of those deceased, whom any of us 
have well known and dearly loved. Their true shrine 
is in our breast. They run for sanctuary to a temple 



BUSHNELL, THE THEOLOGIAN. 385 

within. If one person think well of us, we are sheltered 
enough ; or, if b}^ none human we be understood, we 
refer for judgment to the One who is divine. " The 
secret witness of all-judging Jove" was to the heathen 
mind what a Father's approval is to the Christian ; and 
no evolution in religion will carrj' us beyond paganism, 
against or without our own will. " Why," I asked an 
old musician, " is not Amati excelled bj'the last makers 
of the violin?" '' Because," he replied, ''they do not 
consider it a holy mission." He added that the latest 
expert with the bow is a " p^'gm}^ to Paganini." It is 
not when we conform to, but leave nature in the world 
and our own soul, that we depart from God. The arti- 
ficial is the harmful as well as the false in our life, our 
manners, and our worship. " They showed me," said 
a pious traveller in Ital}-, " so many painted Madonnas 
and carved crucifixes that I was sick and wanted to see 
a cow ; " and verily no idols in color or stone, but the 
creatures with whom our existence is shared, will lead 
us to the Creator. We shall be with him while we are 
with them in love. 



25 



386 PORTEAITS. 



IV. 
THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 

MEN may have a genius for various and even for 
opposite things, and it is with most persons an- 
other name for irregularity, as we find or fanc}^ something 
erratic or eccentric in the orbit which we have but partly 
traced. A comet might be a figure for John Weiss. 
None who knew him but felt that he was possessed or un- 
der the influence and control of a rare spirit, to hurry or 
restrain him, superior to his individual self. So his char- 
acter is not easj' to solve. He was one and contradictory. 
He was cordial, yet apart. He beamed brightl}', yet his 
hand was scarce worth taking, the grasp was so cool 
and shght. He was unconventional and seemed incon- 
sistent. He had at times a womanish petulance, yet was 
without any will of his own. He was intense in his aim, 
yet so jocose as to pass for a trifler. He was an original 
thinker and a mime. Men recover from the habit of 
drinking or smoking, but never from that of wit ; and 
he relieved his seriousness, like Abraham Lincoln, with 
man}' a jest. He did not succeed in proportion to his 
powers, but he was in his subtle influence a success. 
He was a live antinom}' and antithesis. Did he appear 
sauc}', he was devout. Underneath his wagger}' was 
awe. Anti-supernatural in faith, 3^et how supernatural 
and preternatural he was in fact ! How he opposed 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 387 

spiritualism, yet what a medium he was, as if this mod- 
eru Jew had descended from those old Hebrews that 
dealt with familiar spirits ! But after one trial on the 
nerves of others which frightened the spectators and the 
operator himself still more, he did not dare to put forth 
his power again. He felt like a child who, touching a 
spring, has drawn a deluge and set all^the mill-wheels 
turning. He resisted the animal magnetism he pos- 
sessed, which 3'et stole into and produced in part the 
peculiar electric attraction of his public and private 
speech. He was m^^sterious, and the wire of some 
telluric current ended in his brain. He was telegraphic. 
One day, miles awa}^ from his residence, where he was 
at the time, he saw out of sight a powder-train laid to 
an arsenal ; and the explosion dul}' took place ! At 
another time and in another house he was fearfuU}^ ex- 
cited at beholding that some catastrophe was befalling in 
a far-off town, in which that ver}' hour there was a calam- 
itous death b}" burning, indeed. Swedenborg conversed 
with angels, and saw with spiritual eye a distant city, 
Stockholm, in flames. Of the same divine madness 
Weiss had some touch. 

His second sight, however, was unreal sometimes. On 
occasion of a famous regatta between English and 
American oarsmen, on the Thames, he being at the 
Isles of Shoals, it had been arranged that the captain of 
the English steamer should announce from the Ports- 
mouth shore the result, b}' a single rocket if the victory 
la}' with Oxford, but followed after a short interval b}'' 
a second if Cambridge prevailed. One rocket arose, and 
was clearl}' descried b}' the assembled crowd ; and after 
the concerted pause part of the companj^, with Mr. Weiss, 



888 PORTRAITS. 

affirmed that they discerned its fellow cleave the sky. 
Five minutes later, the process was repeated on the main 
shore ; and again Mr. Weiss observed, with man}^ of his 
companions, the repeated ascent, which from all the rest 
of the company was concealed. It turned out that there 
was actually but one rocket, in either case. The ad- 
ditional fiery discharge was of course in the brain, kindled 
with patriotic anticipation of triumph for our side. But 
to the perception he would have taken his oath in court. 
Indeed, that a vision occurred, physiology is now in a 
position to maintain ; but it was recurrent cerebral vision 
without any coiTCsponding object in the air. How far 
science may go thus to explain so-called miraculous 
visions present or past, I leave for scientists to sa}^ 
But no science can determine that all second sight is 
illusory, or that in it the greatest of realities may not be 
revealed. Mr. Weiss had, too, that singular faculty of 
being impressed with the character of a writer whose 
letter he held in his hand. 

But he never exchanged his soul for the world. An 
atheist to some, an infidel as construed by the popular 
church, he yet was, like Spinoza, ""drunk with God." 
He resembled his ancestral David, in that from the In- 
finite Presence he. could not flee. His piety was hered- 
ity. But how half-ashamed to own he was pious at all ! 
He said he so rejoiced in the phrase " still to be " in the 
old hymn, when he awoke in the morning, that he had a 
mind to have family pra3^ers ! Such humor to a super- 
ficial judgment might pass for irreverence. But there 
was in it a godly fear which he would feel mortified, as 
though he must be a Pharisee, to profess. Yet whoso 
reads his books will find them pervaded in and between 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 389 

the lines with the spirit that animated his heart, illu- 
mined his face, intoned his voice, and bowed in secret 
his knees. 

The chime of opposites which the man was, appears 
in his style. How negative and 3'et how positive in 
statement this most unassuming 3'et earnest of creatures 
was ! Light and air}' as if, with Mr. Home's levitation, 
he were going up straightway, yet how levity was absent 
and gravit}' present in ever}- gesture of his hand and in 
each stroke of his pen ! How wrought like iron was every 
period, and how girt for toil, as at the forge, he stood ! 
His paragraphs are shaped too curiously', and ham- 
mered overmuch. The main stream of his thought 
catches, and eddies, and returns in circles without end, 
when it might seem better, propelled with his abundant 
enthusiasm, forthright and swiftl}' to proceed. But this 
craftsman, with Hebrew, Spanish, French, Italian, and 
German blood mingling in his veins, was as sturdj' as he 
was quick. To every stint he put ten thousand patient 
strokes. To get every notion and illustration somehow 
into the pattern, he wove the cloth heavy and thick. 
Like George Eliot and Balzac, from his faithful and 
exact design he could leave nothing out. With all its 
vital and vivacious qualit}', the dress was cumbrous 
and impeding, and, like many a wrap on one's person, 
hindered a run. He cannot be read at a glance, or his 
sense gathered if a word be skipped. There is no want 
of lucidness or unity, but failure rather of broad stretch, 
long flight, and thorough light, although he holds with 
unrelenting clutch to his theme ; and sweet and solid is 
the kernel, however hard to crack may be the shell. 

The answer to any charge of lightness in his deport- 



890 PORTRAITS. 

ment is the incessant severity of his task ; as one said, 
quoting his favorite Browning, 

" I judge his childishness tlie true relapse 
To boyhood of a man, who has worked lately 
And presently will work, so meantime plays ; 
Whence more than ever I believe in him." 

Surely he was no ascetic. Puritanic abstinence from 

good things he even despised ; and if hilarity in him 

ever became an error, and ran into excess, then, to cite 

again, 

" When the dead man is praised on his journey, 
Bear, bear him along, 
With his few faults shut up like dead flowrets : 

The land is left none such 
As he on the bier." 

He composed well, and was himself a ra.re composition. 
He desired no good time which he did not want every- 
body else to have. Innocent and infantine at heart, he 
never posed for greatness, or imposed on anybody. 
With a touch of the Phidian Jove in his features, he was 
playfellow for a child. Dispute personall}' he would 
not. He surrendered in the battle of words at once. 
He did not assert himself enough. Had he, among the 
debaters, stood more to his guns, he would patentlj^ have 
been the greater man he latently was. But he dropped 
the controversy. He would not pick up the challenger's 
glove. He was even comic over all the bravado and 
defiant assault. He filled the room with his atmosphere 
and his thought, but not with any grand, overcoming 
personality in the way of combat or defence. He would 
say, '"It is no matter and what is the use?" With a 
glance or motion he would penetrate apd show off the 
situation, so that the initiated would understand it and 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 391 

him in it, and then mth a slight smile or merry laugh 
he would retire. He had matchless faeult}^ with a wink, 
a gesture, a scarce perceptible change of his coun- 
tenance, or a turn of the head, to indicate what in the 
matter in hand was ludicrous and absurd ; and for him 
this was an all-sufficient and satisfactory repl3\ He 
fought no word}' duel, and accepted no cartel. It were 
painful to him an3'wise to contend ; so he withdrew. 
If quarrel were proposed, he was not there, he ab- 
sented himself. Like a missing second or contestant, he 
did not appear on the ground. Indeed, he never made 
an appointment, however others might, in his behalf, for 
the fight. How he differed from those who lift the horn 
or insert the probe at every possible point ! His spirit 
had a fairy-like gift of travelling far awa}' from his 
body. He was like the benignant and imaginative 
Rufus Choate in this respect. When personal accusa- 
tion was to be met or an angr^' antagonist repelled, he 
was not on the spot ! Gracious stillness and absentee- 
ism worth}^ of all praise, like the silence and distance 
of that preoccupied Lord and Master, who, when before 
Pilate he was accused of many things, answered noth- 
ing, practising good economy in the household of faith 
and the kingdom of God ! 

He was jealous of the prodigious in all sacred narra- 
tives. The anti-miraculous temper ma}^ be religious. 
Yet perhaps the man instructed in law should be tender 
to that taste for marvels which he ma}' remember in him- 
self, as for those curious volutes and finials in architec- 
tural pillars which add nothing to the temple's strength. 
Some of the boasted and registered prodigies to thought- 
ful persons not* only sink into insignificance but become 



892 PORTRAITS. 

an offence. None of them can be more than the mo- 
mentaiy spark from the Lord's chariot-wheels as they 
thunder on their orderlj^ track. A wilful leaving or 
breaking up of the line would but puzzle the mind, and 
incline it to feel as if it were being played fast and loose 
with by the superior force, with which, so taunted, it 
could have no more to do. God cannot have opposite 
and inconsistent ways of accomplishing the same thing. 
Let us argue the question of monsters or sports of nature 
calml}^, but not suppose them essential to the creative 
plan, or that, existing or non-existing, they can for our 
destiny turn one hair white or black. 

The best supernature and disclosure of Deity is that 
class of intellect to which Mr. Weiss belongs. The 
ability so marked in him to crowd all the meaning of 
a topic into one flaming word and flashing bolt is more 
divine than any trick with matter, however authentic 
and allowed ; while the slight which Jesus himself was 
sometimes disposed to put upon the marvellous, with 
his uniform subordination of it to the moral, shows how 
little it would in another have availed with him. 

The real miracle is the soul itself realizing its possi- 
bilities in an}' mood or act. By supreme attention, or 
by dint of steady observation, the human figure becomes 
a statue and the face a stupid stare ; and this person of 
whom I speak could transport himself out of obvious re- 
lations till his absorption made him appear indifferent and 
hard. He had but refined himself, or bj^ a strange en- 
ergy, doing with him what it would, had been lifted out 
of all visible ties ; and if summoned to a concern in aff'airs 
or persons that ought of right to interest him most, he 
would in these trances declare he had of them no knowl- 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 393 

edge, not the least ! Let not the hoi}' professor or prac- 
titioner of ever^-day proprieties harshly judge this state. 
"Whoever has experienced will understand the preoccu- 
pation that so dismisses interruption. Did not the great 
apostle conceive a condition in which distinctions van- 
ished, and there was no longer any barbarian, Scythian, 
male or female, bond or free? May not one venture to 
sa}' that in his own case husband, parent, priest, citi- 
zen, sometimes fall awa}', and he tempts for a while that 
Northwest passage of the soul to some circumpolar sea, 
which he shall traverse at last, and find himself in cir- 
cumstances of that fresh posture to all that is old or new 
which he so vividly anticipates now ? It was in no low 
or selfish pleasure that Mr. Weiss was thus rapt. Give 
him his stud3'-table, his book, and his pen, with no 
noise in the entry, and not even the children to disturb 
him, 3'et with whom he would sit on the floor for a car- 
nival of sugar-plums b}' and b}', and he was content 
with his celestial situation and angelic frame. What 
was most affecting at his obsequies w^as the occupation 
by so many sitters of that very spot so habitually trans-, 
figured to him with the blessed work to which he clung 
while it lifted him like a cross. It was as quiet and 
still as when he sat there alone. But all the more 
for the company there seemed a disappearance, an ab- 
sence, ascension, or vacancy of space and void in the 
heart, which he was but getting ready to fill with a life 
intenser and a beaut}^ more satisfying. Then, as the 
e3'e turned to the remote casket containing the form of 
one whose peculiar traits could so easily persuade us of 
the truth of the old figure of men as but pilgrims here 
below, such a veritable stranger and sojourner as he was, 



394 POETEAITS. 

how strongly stirred the feeling of the reverence with 
which we should think and speak, on the arrival at such 
a waj'-station of those whom we ignorantly call the dead, 
especially when so extraordinary has been the manifes- 
tation which has so suddenly and utterly ceased. Lo ! 
the speechless figure never lay on the bed in slumber so 
profound as now on the bier. It can no longer explain 
to us wliy it has spoken or acted in past time thus and 
so. Did it never defend itself with recriminations? 
It will make no rejoinder at last ! Was there some 
tragedy in its life ? Without voice it begs you to reflect 
how happy in God's boon of being it was nevertheless. 
Had sphere and scope suited to its powers never been 
aflbrded by the contingencies of this sublunary lot ? It 
entreats the bystander to remember, notwithstanding, 
how content and grateful, as for overplus of good, it 
was, and how seldom and slightly it complained. Had 
it seen its inferiors exalted to stations above itself? 
It beseeches you to consider that at their privilege or 
prosperit}" it never had a toOth of envy to gnaw. Had 
it, b}^ bodily infirmit}', or by social disappointment in 
any of its own supporters, been continually shifted into 
a succession of divei'se posts ? It bids you bear in mind 
how pleased as a child, while it remained in an}' of them, 
it was with the kindness and the opportunity brought. 
Did any project fail to put it in desk or on platform 
where, for its acknowledged talents, tlie proper audience 
for the permanent influence would meet? Our own rec- 
ollection assures us that no feeling of wrong, sense of 
others' deficiency, or baffled ambition of its own ever 
took awa}' its courage or quenched its good cheer. Was 
it suspected of discarding the fundamentals of religious 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 895 



faith? It was too much diverted with the magnificent 
spectacle of the world, and marvelled too much at the 
providential plan, as it was too busy on the clew of that 
method of God which threads the labyrinth of things, 
to be troubled with excommunication of the major or 
minor sort. So we will not even say, 

" Let them rave ; 
Thou art quiet in thy grave : " 

for, before thy dust went thither, thou hadst the " central 
peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation," and 
didst hoist for us on this mortal sea one more signal 
for sight of land. 

This man was the pre}" of his mind, engrossed and 
consumed with his thought. His blood was so deter- 
mined to his head that he seemed to Imagine that an 
idea could save the world ! But we cannot plant a 
church in the soil of abstractions, or grow a religion on 
the culture of the brain. On those in whom the plate 
was prepared, what a photograph he impressed ! His 
soft finger found the way in hundreds of souls to that 
secret place where he touched the waiting spring, un- 
folded to them what the}" were or were meant to be, and 
reconstructed or regenerated their nature while he made 
an era in their life and consoled their inmost grief. But 
he was so semi-detached from human existence in its or- 
dinar}' forms that his language, which in his early efforts 
was simple, became at last multiplex and hard to spell, 
and he lost the power to appreciate those traditions on 
which common folk must large]}' feed. There is pre- 
cious import in a cerebral flash. But the cathedral on 
the corner, which we gaze at every day, holds of a long 



896 PORTRAITS. 

past, and a future too ; and what light can strain through 
the colored, cobwebbed, and unwashed windows from an- 
tiquated tales is of more worth to the worshippers within 
than the dark denials from the sensuous understanding 
in all their heap. Men must have nourishment ; and 
even if it be mixed with gravel and dirt, it serves them 
better than the piled husks of speculation that have 
ceased to hold corn. 

Intelligence, in which the whole nature acts, is fair as 
the morning, and promising as a reaper in the field. 
But the pure intellect may be a selfish cormorant de- 
vouring the heart ! In the most disinterested devotion 
to fine processes of argument, that reach in practice 
no end, we may become inconsiderate of our fellow- 
creatures and nearest friends or kin. An involuntar}^ 
and tremendous selfishness threatens the thinker, though 
it be a Channing or Edwards, on whom the spirit of gen- 
eralization lays its grasp, as Balzac in one of his most 
powerful tales, "The Search after the Absolute," por- 
tray- s a man sacrificing his family, wife and child, to his 
insatiable alchemistic pursuits. Beware of indulgence 
of ideality as well as sense ! It has, too, its excess. 
Mr. Weiss would sink in whatever diving-bell or rise in 
whatever balloon would help him to survey more widely 
or dredge more deeply, spending hours of bliss in gaz- 
ing or solitary groping b}^ himself. Then, rising to 
breathe after the prolonged watch or endeavor, his soul 
would stretch itself, basking like a lazzarone in the sun. 
His nature, as we nestle close to it, seems one in- 
stinctively born for jo}-, yet consciously defrauded by 
grief, and singing as in a far land the child Mignon's 
song, ' ' What have they done to thee ? '* 



THE GENIUS OF TVETSS. 397 

More simple, uncalculating enjoj^ment of nature man 
never had. Peering through creation, all became such 
wonder to him that no particular wonder was left. 
What would it signif}' to such a man if he saw all 
the miracles in the Bible performed before his e3^es? 
The}' would melt like snow-flakes, and mingle as drops 
in the boundless amazing sea. Ezra the Prophet sat 
down " astonied " for a time at a particular thing. But 
as the great marvel of the universe is unveiled, all spe- 
cial ones are swallowed up and disappear. The ab- 
surdit}' of prodigious stories was to Mr. Weiss at once 
so transparent and gross that he could scarce patiently 
abide their being told. But we must not forget the office 
of fable as well as fact, nor the distinction between the 
artless gospel-narrative before science had dawned and 
the coarse literal construction now put upon it in the 
face and eyes of scientific truth. I will not tear the leaf 
that keeps the picture of the marriage-feast in Cana of 
Gahlee, more than I would S3'ringe with vitriol Paul 
Veronese's painting of rudd}' wine on his canvas of the 
scene. Hunting with his keen scent on the trail of the 
Divine footsteps in the creation, his brain humming and 
singing with the snatches of the rhythm he might catch, 
Mr. Weiss lost at length part of the cipher of communi- 
cation with his fellow-men. He was, with manner and 
feature and tone, the ke}' to his own works. 

" The silent organ loudest chants 
The master's requiem." 

Now that the ke}' is gone, much of the sense to most 
readers will be hard to unlock, or to those who know 
not the wards slow will be the opening of the safe. But 
treasure is in ever}' secret di'awer, as truly as in Shak- 



398 PORTRAITS. 

speare's sonnets and Browning's plays. Great is the 

writing, but greater was the man. 

Mr. Weiss was handled by a power higher than his 

own, and conscious in his measure of the wing that bore 

up Milton and the check Socrates felt. The mighty 

sweep of the English bard or the awful alighting of the 

Greek sage may not be repeated. But the lowest pitch 

or faintest flutter in another spirit proves it akin to them, 

and fledged in the same nest whence came the singer 

that 

" With no middle flight intends to soar/' 

and the teacher who brought down wisdom from heaven 
to earth. If not a genius, he is possessed with genius who 
is habitually aware that he is a messenger and errand- 
bearer in the emplo}^ of some daimon^ as the ancients 
called it, or the Hol}^ Ghost, according to the new dis- 
pensation, and is by the unaccountable potency arrested 
or spurred ; and the person of whom I write conspicu- 
ously exhibited either sign. 

An artist in colors or words hazards a little his 
sti'okes, and lets his thoughts run. He trusts his mem- 
ory, restrains calculation, hopes for inspiration, keeps 
his will back, and thus sometimes compasses a felicity be- 
yond elaborate accomplishment. So I let the present por- 
traiture mainly do itself. A flawless character does not 
exist. Fault is found with Jesus. The reason we can- 
not describe God is in his perfection. As without back- 
ground, light, and shade, there can be no picture, so 
defects or dark places in my theme show ofl* great qual- 
ities, without feeling which I would not treat it at all. 

If I am perplexed with the variety of traits, I find an 
advantage in their transparency. Mr. Weiss had no 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 399 

concealments. If there were secrets in his, as there 
should be in every breast, he had no shameful ones. 
What he was he appeared to be. He la}' open as the 
da}'. He wore no official disguise. He wished to make 
no impression of goodness. He made no reference to 
his conscience, or to the motives b}' which he was ruled. 
Such was his hatred of pretence that he doubtless showed 
his worst side. But he was an earnest man. Have 
some been troubled b}" his temperament, so like a rus- 
tling, changeable silk, or an opal flashing with many 
hues ? He was as stead}^ as a drill-sergeant at his post. 
He would sit and not stir from breakfast to dinner in his 
stud3^, till his feet were numb and cold, while his head 
was a globe of light, and he would have to stamp back the 
circulation of the blood before he could stand and walk. 
So long and perfect as eternit}' had been his spiritual 
joy. He did not like criticism, which yet he patiently 
bore. But he loved truth, being, as one who had plain* 
dealing from him said, " the sincerest person that ever 
lived." He would not endure misrepresentation in pri- 
vate, or the altering of an}^ article of his for the public. 
Should I, contrary to Cromwell's dictate to an artist, 
paint his complexion with favor he had not, he would ap- 
pear to me with that loudest of rebukes, an inward one. 

He was a ver}' particular man. In large things or 
nttle, of the domestic reckoning and procedure, he must 
have every thing exactl}' so, and not otherwise. Into 
this idea he, the most unwilful of men, put his will with 
irresistible pressure, even in his weakest and sickest 
hours. If fifty-five drops of medicine were to be taken, 
he would not have it fifty-four. The order in every 
scrap of his papers was precise. Yet his nature was 



400 " PORTRAITS. 

Gothic and manifold. He was not bnilt on a simple 
plan, like a hall with one ceiling and room ; but rounds 
within rounds, or height above height, like those Edin- 
burgh houses, seven stories tall. 

He believed that all could be discovered. He had no 
agnostic despair of knowledge. Any tether of our in- 
telligence, or any pillars of Hercules to limit explorers, 
he did not allow. He never took in sail. Spurning 
limits of human authorit}^, and vehemently repudiating 
and ridding himself of ecclesiastical yokes, he would 
not be confined to any new sect. He revolted from the 
pioneers when verbal rules were stated or external ob- 
jects proposed. Perhaps he was not practical enough. 
Certainly out of any party traces he incontinently slipped. 
He believed in and gave himself to free thought as an 
element, and was its organ, but not organizer. He was 
not belligerent to fight its battles, save frankly on the 
field of ideas with imagined foes, himself a friend, in 
fact, to either host armed for the fray. If there were a 
battery in his brain, it was not commonly loaded, and 
never masked, but kept mostly useless, like the cannon 
I saw on the open shore at Teneriffe, marked inutiles. 
He was no coward, yai he would rather run than contend 
in the war of words ; and, instead of firing back when 
he had been shot at, he would with a slight shrug sa}^ 
" I see I have been misunderstood." He knew his su- 
periority, but was too lowly for it to be possible for him 
to condescend. 

It has been said that he grew morose and sorrowful 
in his later j^ears. This is a mistake. There was no 
sunset in his face. There were straits of fortune, but 
no degradation of mind. His st3de, like that of Carl^de 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 401 

•after the essa}' on Burns, and of Browning in the earlier 
" Sordello," and later poems, such as "The Ring and the 
Book," in becoming more compact became less clear. 
Perhaps the condensed meaning did not always atone 
for the less melodious strain. But the man was never 
heated or sour at sixty more than at thirtj^ years of age. 
Neither a born nor a trained soldier, he avoided conflict, 
unless some crisis woke him up. He was but too glad 
to be excused from an}- fray. Rather than maintain his 
own rights, he would give them up. He made no push 
for victor}^, but threw himself on the knotty questions, 
more tough than an}^ cords in the prestidigitator's box, 
which no man has 3^et been deft or strong enough to 
untie ; and of his scholarl}' learning, as of his ready wit, 
there was no end. 

We are sure to find something against the man who 
differs from us. His character will be at fault if his 
opinion is. If he be a heretic, we shall account him a 
foe. All his opposition is bitterness, of course, and he is 
as preposterous as he is far off ! So the radical will be 
but a destroyer's other name. Meantime, the conserva- 
tive, an innocent lamb in his protest, and making the 
freethinker the scapegoat of all sin, suspects no gall in 
his own composition, but heaps epithets and multiplies 
implications on the dissenter's head. "Who should 
have a scorn like the Christian's ? " said Channing ; but 
must we not learn who the Christian is ? 

In this man a wondrous equanimity steadied an un- 
matched sensibility. This magnetic needle, jarred as it 
might be, ever trembled back to the pole. His failures 
were in his constitution or preoccupation, not from un- 
fair bias or wrong intent. For much defect there is 

26 



402 PORTRAITS. 

apology enough in a feeble frame. A fine genius over- 
wrought b}^ hard study or spiritual impulse is not seldom 
of an invalid organism, the needful protection of which 
may nurse, in such men as both Weiss and Channing 
were, a certain self-regard. Both physicall}^ undertoned 
for fort}^ years, Channing's mind did not pla}", but what 
rollicking and excessive libert}^ everybod}' had with Mr. 
Weiss ! Channing considered every thing, and Weiss 
was quite inconsiderate of much it is best not to waive ! 
Both had to be cared for, and to care for themselves, in 
order to keep the cerebral processes, so unlike, yet in 
either so delicate, in working trim. Channing was 
abstemious, and for blameless enjoyment Weiss had a 
laughing and indulgent eye. If Channing stands as the 
colossus at the harbor of Rhodes, Weiss is a sphinx or 
Memnon's statue in Eg3q:>tian sands ; and his light and 
music did not wane, but waxed, in the later j'ears. Exam- 
ination of his public discourses and recollection of club 
debates or of private interviews prove in him a constant 
growth. As the rose-color increases in windows ex- 
posed to the sun, so his sensuous fancy deepened ; yet 
his purity was evident to those who knew him best, 
although he was no simulator, like Fielding's "philoso- 
pher Square." He never wronged the human brothers 
or sisters whom he drew with a strange force, though 
without purpose. Joyous in earthly things, none made 
more the impression of one ready to rise above them. 
There was, indeed, a singular suggestion of ascending in 
his look and attitude ; and this, in the last photographs 
taken of him, was emphasized by lines of pain in the 
features. It was a look of "touch and go," as if his 
body were filled with ether, and he were only held to 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 403 

the ground. Native in his temper to another than the 
New England chmate and soil, he is difficult of compre- 
hension b}' our puritanic thought. 

Things could no doubt be told of all the good in their 
earl}' da3's b}' which their veritable image would be 
marred. But by a divine law of neglect these little 
things drop from their images in the human heart. 
The great man always becomes in time a m3'th, a vast 
and splendid ideal. He is taken up into the blood of 
humanit3^ He is incarnate in his kind. He is swept 
and projected in the orbit of histor}' as an unquench- 
able star. Spies for faults have fancied the}' found 
that even such a man as Channing, "who holds," says 
Laboulaye, " the future of Protestantism," was selfish, 
penurious, and proud. He did not like to be discom- 
posed ! But shall we listen to the poor jealousy that 
exaggerates foibles and misunderstands the details it 
picks up, which for all who knew the person pass away 
before the glory of his thought? Hanging in the same 
hall of memory a likeness of Weiss, I claim for that the' 
generous judgment which is fair. 

Mr. Weiss' s peculiarity was a hatred of falsehood. 
In the high places of the pulpit it is not prudent to 
attack popular errors. All that a well- remembered 
preacher in this vicinity could say was, that he was 
" mighty careful to tell no lies." The orator with his 
wdnd-chest carries all before him. But let no admired 
discourser imagine that the excited throng at his temple 
or tabernacle proves him on the line of advance for 
mankind ! When there was a multitude Jesus took his 
leave. Goethe in the same sense describes the traveller 
that goes aside fi'om the crowd. But how the old su- 



404 PORTRAITS. 

perstitions and delightful shows still succeed ! As Lord 
Bacon says, " men prefer to the diamond the deeper- 
colored gems." Why is the ecclesiastic so irritated by 
the question which a scientist puts, but that it reaches 
a sore spot, as the physician's finger touches the weak 
vertebra in his patient's back? O ni}^ brother of the 
clerical cloth, in your displeasure under inquiry I find 
the uneasiness of your own doubt. But who can 
measure the boon of lo3'alt3^ to the inmost persuasions 
of the breast? Our convictions put us under oath. 
Such writers as Mr. Weiss are called theorizers. But 
nothing is so important as correct theories. What mis- 
chief from incorrect ones ! The irreligious communist 
throws petroleum and overthrows monuments in France, 
and in America tears down stations and interrupts 
trains. The Nihilist in Russia murders the noble, as if 
assassination could be freedom's womb. The individu- 
alist everywhere confounds his own selfishness with uni- 
versal love, and would promote humanity by inhuman 
means, imitating the oppressor he would put down. But 
slavery is not abolished while injustice exists from high 
or low. The deceived and cheated freedman finds him- 
self in Egypt still, and a new exodus for his onl}^ hope. 

Mr. Weiss was broadly humane, and veracity most 
of all I note in him. After Goethe, whom he loved to 
translate, was over eighty years of age, one of the gen- 
tler sex, being also advanced in life, sends him a message 
to say his fidelit}^ alone saved her from dishonor in a 
mutual afl'ection of their youth. Such frankness is the 
test of honor. Truthfulness is a moral trait, and no 
pure intellect can cover the whole of human life. We 
do ourselves an ill turn in converting heart into brain. 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 405 

It is as hardening a process as hepatizing of the hmgs. 
It is transmuting gold into baser metal. The man 
is more than his performance, and we shall not cany 
pra3'er-book or Bible to heaven. What a power in the 
death that suddenly takes our nearest friend as far from 
our reach as Adam or Moses ! The man I speak of, 
with all his demonstrations of power, could pass out of 
himself into another, and be for the time like the crea- 
ture taking the color of the leaf it is on, becoming 
Browning or Shakspeare, the English or Greek drama- 
tist, of whom he so well discoursed. Swept by the wind 
of that mighty planet, Parker, he put on for a while his 
st3'le of pungent and forthright speech, with the phalanx 
of facts in battle arra}'. But that intellectual influence 
passed, and with a subtiltj' of logic and fancy wholl}' out 
of Parker's compass or beat, he became as ingenious and 
parenthetical as the Apostle Paul. Like Paul, he had 
such raptures that he can scarce be more conscious of his 
immortalit}' in heaven than he was at times on the earth. 
I do not present him as an image of perfection. Perhaps 
he did not even think it important or intended for any 
one to be without speck ! Had he been a cunning pre- 
tender, like some men and clergymen, he might have 
passed for a saint. But to him the assumption of 
holiness was so odious that he bordered on scorn for 
conventional righteousness, and took up the Lord's 
apologies for such as love had led into sin. Yet b}' his 
mere}', like the Master's, the moral quality was only 
emphasized, and never slurred or blurred. The his- 
trionic actor of virtue he would laugh at ; but Christ's 
not shunning the disrepute of keeping low compan}- he 
admired, and he indulged in merry-makings which no 



406 PORTRAITS. 

true descendant of the Puritans can be expected to 
abide. But whatever spots were on or suspected in 
him, his substantial excellence is as blazing as the sun. 
His affections were like those of Montaigne, who said 
he was blunt and faint to such as he most trul}^ be- 
longed to. You could not tell, b}' an}' oath or profession 
on his part, how much he cared for jou, though 3'ou were 
brother of his very mind and heart. His reyaro? would 
be literall}-^ in his look, in his manner, or in some hu- 
morous epithet on meeting his friend. But he loved 
as intensely as he thought, as Bonaparte said of his 
feeling that it had the measure of his mind. There are 
but two things, loving and being loved, and the chief 
pleasure of the last to a noble soul is in the lover's own 
delight. 

Mr. Weiss was often like the man up in a balloon who 
cannot give us a cup of cold water down below. Raph- 
ael and Arj^ Scheffer, in their pictures of the transfig- 
ured or consolatory Christ, represent figures that flock 
for healing and help, and yet must wait wistfully under- 
neath with eager gaze and outstretched hand. Eleva- 
tion is purchased at a dear price in exchange for open 
sympathy ; for we do not credit the interest that is hid. 
But Mr. Weiss was nothing, if not true. He said naught 
which had to be explained away. Who has not known 
the brilliant man in politics and the fine woman of so- 
ciety, by their accommodation and compromise of prin- 
ciple, to contract a blindness which no asylum can shel- 
ter or operator cure ? Put cunning for conscience in the 
desk and the school, and we have an education leav- 
ing the spiritual eye unopened, like that of the fish in 
the Mammoth Cave. But if unsealing the vision or 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 407 

widening the horizon be a greater benefit than bread to 
the hungrj^ or clothing to the naked, how man}- have 
had a benefactor in the friend of whom I speak ! 

Mr. Weiss was a discerner of spirits. He could ap- 
praise character, admire the hero, and yet see his defects. 
In the coui-ageous Parker, wlio converted him to philan- 
thropy-, he noted the combative and doughty self not 
quite absorbed in his cause ; in Webster, a complete dig- 
nit}', but not on the highest plane ; in the humane and 
heroic Sumner, a slight pedantry, so that the majestic 
American crisis could not make him pass by Greece and 
Eome, or forget his own name ; in Seward, the politic 
prophet ; in Lincoln, the true seer ; and in John Brown, 
a simple utter earnestness. 

Doubtless he took the wrong side of the question some- 
times, or argued it with bad taste. He turned the wine 
into water, as he ridiculed the turning of water into wine. 
He dramatized sometimes as a performer when perfect 
simplicity would have been more in place. He rushed 
asph3'xiated, so he said, from the room when, in war- 
time at a conference, prayer was proposed instead of ac- 
tion in the field ! He was alternatel}' angel and imp, yet 
not of mischief, there being no cruelty in him, but only 
roguish sport. His real and manifold nature could be 
suppressed b}' no oflScial proprieties. Dainty, dreamy, 
and luxurious in his imagination, that parochial visiting, 
which is half of the minister's dut}', was to him an un- 
welcome and dragging routine, b}- his neglect of which 
his usefulness and acceptableness in some situations were 
sta^'ed. To the tiresome man}', with all their pett}' crosses 
and cares, he preferred the societ\' of the like-minded 
and the congenial few. He indulged his preference, and 



408 PORTE AITS. 

paid the price. Perhaps he was not patient enough with 
the slow intellectual progress of mankind. " He dug his 
carrots in August," and wished to reap prematurely from 
the seed-sowing of truth. He was vexed with the tardy 
settlement of the national strife ; and although not sol- 
dierly as Parker was, yet, like him, he foreshadowed the 
sword. He was credited with self-assurance in some 
quarters, and I have heard the term flippant applied to 
his style. But there was an infinite tenderness and a 
tremulous timidity under his audacity ; and I doubt not 
that his early and faithful preaching on temperance and 
against slavery cost him many an inward struggle, as 
well as favor with men whos^ friendship it pained him 
to lose. When I add that his nervous system, at once 
so mighty and so weak, and ever threatening to give 
way, braced itself with whatever joviality was at hand, 
I have told every thing against him that I know. 

Humor in him was essential and inwrought. When, 
after a nearly twelve-month prostration by disease, it 
was necessary for him to have a nurse, he looked her 
curiously over when she was introduced into the room, 
then begged a moment's private interview with his faith- 
ful and unweariable wife, and with a twinkle bright and 
wet in his e^'e, said to her, " You have added a new ter- 
ror to death ! " 

He was deeply religious, even while by his smiles, 
like the eddies that dimple the unfathomed tarn, his 
pious emotions were hid. His early tender feeling for 
Jesus never ceased, although his view of the Christ's 
Messiahship, kingship, and mediatorship widely' changed. 
But Jesus never became to him a mere man. There is 
no mere man ! 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 409 

Every thing substantial, save the absolute substance, 
has its shadows. The}' are cast even by sublime virtues 
and transcendent gifts. But the measure of merit, as 
the poet Burns hints, is in what we resist as well as in 
what we do ; and how incomparable a trait is an irre- 
proachable sanctit}' in those who, like Mr. Weiss, fasci- 
nate and allure ! He was exposed to misconstruction 
b}' the playfulness on which he put no check. He could 
not walk the streets like a doctor of divinit}'. Instead 
of wearing a minister's garb, he did not know or care 
what he had on. As he had no pride of dress, so he 
did not disguise his thoughts with any false trick. He 
towered amid our overshadowing pulpit-reputations with- 
out taking pains. In intellectual probit}' he was never 
surpassed. Happy if those of more note and noise 
really articulate the spirit in those S3'llables and sen- 
tences which are the trite coinage of the common air ! 

Not because Mr. Weiss was less but more religious, 
he discarded the ecclesiasticism that puts for worship a 
show, for faith superstition, for the wondering sentiment 
a blank surprise, and some prox}- or substitute of sense 
for God, Christ, or heaven. That, with a portentous 
temperament and a handwriting like fine sword-thrusts, 
he could have such genialitj' in strife, can be accounted 
for perhaps by early shocks which made it impossible 
for him to copy others' rage, and by his own keen per- 
ception that whoever gets angr^' gives up the game. 
The Spartans shamed their children out of intemper- 
ance by showing their helots drunk ; and to a sensitive 
soul one pattern is warning enough against the worse 
intoxication of wrath, sometimes seen in those who ab- 
stain from wine. 



410 PORTRAITS. 

The man whom I celebrate did not, hi his logic, his 
rhetoric, or ideas, spare the antagonist side. But, as he 
would give his last dollar to some poor German at the 
door, and have nothing left to pay his passage in the 
car, I think he has reached the gate, as he has taken 
the journey, which requires no ticket or entrance-fee. 
Undeceived by loud pretensions, and making light of 
this world's pomp and personal dignity, he was only 
half liked by such as had "reverence large," and he 
displayed little of that sociable talent which makes the 
minister popular with his flock. But his nature was mu- 
sic ; and the great s3'mphonies pleased him as echoes of 
the harmon}^ of the spheres. Somewhat of Beethoven 
was in him, and he has gone where he hears the dis- 
cords no more. He argued for " personal continu- 
ance," and was one of its best proofs. There must be 
more fuel for such a flame ! It is more than that on 
which it is fed. Immortality is no fact of chronology, 
but that state of mind which implies the other side of 
the grave. Faith is its own foundation. The soul is 
not at rest on the earth, as the bird is not as easy in the 
branches or on the ground as on its perch of air. That 
constituenc}^ of an intellectual and spiritual brotherhood 
and sisterhood b}' which he is mourned and whose fan- 
cies he refined so exquisitely, while he raised their ideas 
of God and nature to the utmost pitch, will find in his 
own so extraordinary traits the demonstration of his 
hope and their own. Bright as was his intelligence, it 
was but the lustre of a loving soul, as the flashes of day 
proceed from the heat and bod}' of the sun. For he 
too was " a burning and a shining light." 

The personal appearance of Mr. Weiss was as remark- 



THE GENIUS OF WEISS. 411 

able as his mind. Soft lines of manl}^ beauty enclosed 
his olive-colored Oriental features, and his fluent, half- 
feminine form. His figure, in middle life, was so thin 
and sepulchral that one said he seemed to have ridden 
from Mount Auburn into Boston, to preach and then 
return ; and Theodore Parker, observing his extraordi- 
nary" delicac}' and death-like look, pronounced him a 
doomed man, little thinking that his friend would be his 
biographer, and survive himself b}^ nearly a score of 
3'ears. Yet, nearing his sixt^'-first birthda}', his temples 
edged with white, he made no impression of age, but 
surprised us as with an unfading spring. Still, like a 
fountain, boiled and bubbled the kindl}" mirth, which 
severe and repeated attacks of disease could not check. 
His constitutional qualit}^ of strangel}* blended tender- 
ness and strength issued in the singularity of his voice, 
which, in its ordinary level tones and eas}' inflections, 
had a mellowness that no woman's utterance could ex- 
ceed, and among men was be3'ond compare, yet as, 
in passages of great excitement, it rose and stooped, 
was touched with the sibyl's frenzy, and burst into a 
prophet's scream. As thunder is followed by rain, his 
fulgurations ended in tears. His fancy was a kaleido- 
scope or painter's palette, where not a pigment was 
wanting, and sometimes the colors got mixed and con- 
fused. The sublime bordered in his style on the funny, 
and the pathetic joined the grotesque. He could be 
majestic or tricks}^, Prospero or Puck, and not seldom 
Ariel too. He relished clown and buffoon as well as 
king or courtier in the pla3\ He enacted others, and 
was a seer himself. As well blame a mocking-bird for 
its changeful notes, or a flamingo for the flashing of its 



412 PORTRAITS. 

crimson wings, or the natural sk}^ for its heat-lightning 
after stormy claps, as this finer alterativeness in human 
shape. But one thing, his courage, never shifted or 
flinched. When Sumter is fired at, or bondage grasps 
new soil, even the stupid feel the shock, and start to 
their feet. But men sleep on when insidious supersti- 
tion would buy up free thought, and moor worship to 
preposterous traditions and discredited forms. This 
slumber none was more brave than Mr. Weiss to dis- 
turb. He would fain rend the veil of the Bible mj'thol- 
ogy wholly off. 

But this radical was to the last the Christian which he 
would have smiled away any summons to him to claim 
or confess to be ! Of the earthly form of our friend 
naught is left. But something remains. Love is un- 
quenchable by all the waters that flow through the dark 
valley and shadow of death. Cord and wheel and 
pitcher and bowl break and dissolve. But that in a 
man which is composed of no one or all of these things 
abides and lives. We will not repine at death. With- 
out it is no progress on a higher plane. The thought 
would tire us of living for ever in these carnal swathings 
and first swaddling-clothes. 



GAERISON, THE REFORMER. 413 



V. 

GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 

IT is hard to certify the real author of au}^ benefit, in- 
A^ention, or revolution. Did Columbus, or Americus 
Yespuccius, or somt Northman or Norwegian, or an emi- 
grant tribe from the East, first discover the Western 
World ? Into whose field of view did the new planet first 
swim? By whom was etherization found out? Did 
Newton and Darwin make their own discoveries, or does 
the credit belong to predecessors who put them on the 
track ? Who was Jesus but the fulfiUer of Jewish proph- 
ecy, a man who got his hints from its antecedents, a 
flower or centur} -plant of which Providence dropped 
obscurel}' the seed? Was slavery abolished by Abra- 
ham Lincoln, by William Llo3'd Garrison, by Clarkson 
and Wilberforce, or b}' John Brown? B3" no one of 
them or all, we are now told, but by the early martyrs 
in this country of the Methodist Church. There is more 
than one who cries in the wilderness, who explores the 
desert or pioneers in the woods. No Alexander Sel- 
kirk but comes, as he treads the sandy shore, upon 
other tracks besides his own. The human race is old, 
and sends more than one scout in ever}' direction ; and 
if one man cries out " Land" a little sooner than the 
rest of the sailors in the vessel, it is onl}' because he is 
by chance at the mast-head. Mankind has a total move- 



414 PORTRAITS. 

ment, as all its members are but one body ; but its 
common-sense singles out and settles down upon the 
particular persons who, as it wins one after another po- 
sition, gave the word " Forward, march ! " and Garrison 
will be in history the " Liberator," even as so his news- 
paper was called. 

When we consider what a moral way-station was 
reached on this continent, inaccessible as b}^ the almost 
unanimous voice it had been declared, and that what the 
young man predicted the old man Garrison saw, — that 
an infam}^ unparalleled became for him universal fame ; 
that having been hated and hunted during most of his 
life, he died in the uncontradicted love and honor of his 
nation and the human race, and in the odor of sanctit}^, 
like a catholic saint, — old Simeon's willingness to de- 
part in peace because a child had been born seems 
trifling to this man's reason for jo}^ in the discharge of. 
bis mission, and to the sublime attitude in which great 
events placed him at his mortal end. 

Herein lay his greatness, that, ironclad warrior as 
he had been for more than a score of 3- ears, it was 
not necessary to his happiness to continue to fight. 
They surel}^ had noble and honorable motives who 
would keep up the antislavery organization after the 
slaves were freed, in order to defend and protect those 
wards of philanthropj' who in their first tottering steps 
were still so exposed. But was it not also grand in 
the leader to wish to ground arms and dissolve when 
the object was attained, as it was generous to insist on 
sharing the laurels of the victory, for which he would 
not have waged war, with the President who had signed 
the proclamation he was so soon to seal with his blood ? 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 415 

It was just no less ; for when the bullet pierced Lincoln's 
brain, slaver}' did not in its aim mistake the foe ! He 
had said he would save the nation without destro3'ing 
slavery, if he could. But he would not let slaver}' de- 
stroy the nation, by whose destruction he knew a com- 
mon ruin would involve both black and white. The glory 
of any man is in his unselfish design ; and b}' an equal 
devotion both of these men were marked. The people 
smiled with humor and gazed with admiration at the 
abolitionists who, banded in the earl}' struggle so closely 
together against the monstrous iniquity they assailed, 
did not in the later stages of the conflict spare each other 
in any difference of view. But all the rest of them were 
singularl}' indisposed to bring into question the one at 
their head ! There was no mutin}^ with the captain 
among the troops. They knew his truth ! No one in 
the ranks more vehemently than lie denounced what was 
proslavery in the Constitution and administration of the 
land. The terrible phrases, the sharp catchwords, 
the mottoes on the banner, or proverbs in the mouth, 
came mostly from his lips and pen. It was as difficult 
for him as for anybody else that ever fought for a cause 
to believe in the entire honesty of such as did not in 
judgment or action agree with him. Yet he did not wish 
them to be branded or stained. It was not hatred of 
the sinners so much as horror at the sin that moved him 
to his task ; and his disinterestedness had at least the 
reward of a tender consideration for himself in all his 
intercourse with his associates, whatever dissension 
might arise. In the long course of human controversy 
nothing is more affecting than the gentleness shown to 
Garrison b}^ those co-laborers in their conflicts of policy, 



416 POKTRAITS. 

» 

as they came like Paul and Barnabas, to the parting of 
the ways. The}^ behaved better than did Barnabas and 
Paul ! This mildness for him, as with a spiritual father, 
will be remembered especially in one still living, whose 
name will shine, when his form may vanish, with the name 
of Garrison as does the blended lustre of a binar}?- star. 

After the storm what a charm we feel in the beauty 
of the serene sky, as it bends over land and sea under 
the reflection of the sun, that seems to have its setting 
not only in the horizon, but in every rock and wave and 
leaf on the tree ! The brightness of such a living calm 
was, during the latter years, in Garrison's face. -He wore 
a strange and sublime look of satisfaction and of com- 
pleted desire. Other things, indeed, after the great 
emancipation filled his time and interested his mind, — 
temperance, woman's rights, a fair chance in our poli- 
tics for the negroes, and justice to the Chinese. But 
the work he had done was so vast that every thing else 
appeared but as an afterpiece, the consequence of the 
peculiar deliverance, and the ingathering of the fruit 
that follows the shaking of the boughs. No one, how- 
ever, could notice any slackening in his activit}^ or cool- 
ing of his zeal. Whatever measure of legislation or of 
associated enterprise he might espouse or oppose, he 
showed the same independence of opinion and proced- 
ure, and that superiority to human fear or favor which 
was in his original grain. 

In the idea held of Garrison among most intelligent 
and good men fort}^ 3'ears ago, he was but a town-crier 
and bell-ringer disturbing quiet people with his noise ; 
or a new sort of Peter the Hermit provoking an imprac- 
ticable and profitless crusade, acrid in his own temper 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 417 

and charging baseness on the millions who would not 
adopt his means. But the fact that his enterprise was 
never forlorn or hopeless in his own mind proves that 
he had a faith, beyond that of his censors, in mankind ! 
He felt it was impossible that when the}' perceived their 
sins they should not renounce them. That he was bitter 
against the crime of slaver}^ was not the ugliness but the 
beaut}' of the man. Is not the ph^-sician disqualified 
and guilt}' of malpractice who cannot, on occasion, pre- 
scribe pills of wormwood and draughts of gall ? Garri- 
son's bitterness was to Garrison no more than is the 
pungency in the seed that gives the delicious flavor to 
the berry and fruit. " Purge me with h}ssop," cries 
David, ' ' and I shall be clean ; " and our reformer showed 
himself skilful in his selection and application of the 
needful and virtuous herbs ! The sweet voice and sunny 
face and benign temper, that made the music and light 
and air of his dwelling, and were to wife and children a 
perpetual charm, were not thrown off like an outside 
garment in order that he might be an east-wind to op- 
ponents and a public scold. He was a genial, generous, 
and honorable foe to men in their bad customs ; but he 
hated no man. North or South. Those from either sec- 
tion who met him delighted in his presence and in his 
talk ; and among the sympathizers in his aim he was the 
most gracious and merry of the band, which he at first, 
according to the Master's example, wanted to be of the 
number of twelve. In one of the earliest assemblies of 
the faithful, on premises which had formerly served for a 
barn, he congratulated the company that they had got 
footing at last " on a stable foundation ; " and after some 
who were present, to whom the prospect seemed gloomy, 

27 



418 PORTRAITS. 

had spoken in a melancTioly strain, he surprised his male 
and female disciples with the quotation of a familiar poet- 
ical quatrain : — 

" Oh, come on some cold rainy day, 

When the birds cannot show a dry feather; 
Bring your sighs and j'our tears, Granny Gray ; 
Let us all be unhappy together ! " 

But miser}- was no visitor in his house or heart. In his 
convictions he was tranquil, and in his affections he was 
fervent and even gay. An earnest man, sa3ing of preva- 
lent dispositions and actions what he thinks, is quite un- 
conscious of the severity which his language imports to 
the listening ears. He is concerned onl3^with delivering 
his message, to bear testimony and tell the truth. To 
describe the situation, not to stigmatize any particular 
individuals who are involved in making it, is his intent. 
But the prophet must roll off his burden on whomsoever 
it may roll ; and Garrison was another Micah to rebuke 
our unmeaning sacrifices and hypocritical forms. 

Mr. Garrison was of a nature so peaceful that he was 
a non-resistant by profession, yet he was such a re- 
specter of others' freedom of thought and behavior that 
he would put no obstacle of paternal authority against 
his son's decision to enlist for the civil war, which, 
strangely enough, this hater of all violence or of ap- 
peals to arms did more than any other man, uninten- 
tionallj', to provoke. In his philosophy we ma}^ think 
him wrong. He assumed that non-resistance is a prin- 
ciple, when it is but a way, and only one among many, — 
a Christian precept, precious as enjoining a spirit of for- 
bearance, but not intended or acceptable as an invaria- 
ble rule. It cannot be held as a principle, as it is but a 



GAREISON, THE REFOEMER. 419 

mode of action, or rather non-action ; and a principle 
will prescribe, according to circumstances, diverse and 
even opposite waj's in which to act. Non-resistance 
is passivit}' ; but we must act. Truth is a principle, 
righteousness is a principle, and love is a principle ; 
but whether these, one or all, shall dictate defence of 
ourselves and our cause, or submission without a blow, 
depends on the case in hand, the prospect of suc- 
cess, the born soldier's inspiration of courage, and the 
providence of God. To 3 ield up a State to insurgents 
against its lawful voters' will without a stroke, if its 
government be pushed to that pass, were political trea- 
son and desertion of a divinel}' allotted post. Temper- 
ance is a principle ; but total abstinence is a method, 
which individuals may practise, or laws attempt to 
enforce. To denounce as unprincipled any persons 
who decline to use and urge this method is falsehood 
and slander combined, until the proof is made out of 
poison in ever}' drop of wine for the sick and fainting by 
the wa}', and for the communicant at the Lord's table, 
although the evil of strong drink is so dreadful that 
it seems natural, if not excusable, for the sake of human 
safetj", to confound a temporary measure with a divine 
law. Yet none more than the zealous reformer should 
remember that the principle of temperance applies prop- 
erh' to ever}' passion of our nature, motion of our hand, 
and word on our tongue. 

But if by temperance we mean, be the wind with 
others high or low, to pursue the even tenor of one's 
way, a more sober man than Garrison never lived. His 
course was that of a planet, which can be predicted to 
the end. Nothing could be more barren or strong than 



420 POBTRATTS. 

his st3'le. Justice being his point, and infalhble recti- 
tude his Kne, he succeeded b}' dint of continuance and 
repetition. After man}" a stroke of a hammer at the 
same place on a ledge, or on the trunnion of a cannon, 
stone and iron -give wa}^ A succession of sounds in a 
chamber, if the}' be not usual and monotonous, like the 
sighing of the wind or the ticking of a clock, will arouse 
one from the heaviest sleep. What we incessantly 
and importunately and rightly pra}" for, be it the con- 
solation of sorrow, improvement of character, or king- 
dom of God, will surety come ! The abolition of slavery 
was Garrison's aim and cry, and the unwritten, never 
omitted, punctually recited liturg}' of his soul. He not 
only persisted ; he was perseverance incarnate, and he 
was equit}^, too. He wanted, in a friend's house, to 
pa}^ for a pane of glass which he had chanced to break. 
"A just weight and balance is the Lord's," and was 
Garrison's. He awoke the nation at last, called down 
Heaven's decree by stress of his petition, and broke the 
fetters of the slave b}^ his tremendous claini. Bej'ond 
good sense, a grasp of moral ideas and of historical 
details, his intellect was not richly endowed. Com- 
pared with some of his own comrades, he had a meagre 
mind. His merit was ordinary as a poet or occasional 
bard. He was not as eloquent as some of his compeers, 
yet his voice, more than theirs, was loaded with a 
power as of fate. He was not Aaron persuading the 
people, but Moses with his laws ; and on the tables, 
not of rock, but of men's hearts, he got them finally 
engraved. He took by long siege, and overthrew our 
old feudal castle of bondage, our bastile of oppression, 
by no ingenious search and manifold trial of its vulnera- 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 421 

ble points, but b}' one catapult at the nailed and knotty 
gates. It was a greater triumph than that at Vicks- 
burg. He was omnipotent for that supreme blow, was 
raised up for that purpose as much as the Isaiah or 
Amos he loved to quote were for their Hebrew mission, 
and in comparison he was good for nothing else. He 
was the ox3^gen in our air, and embodied the con- 
science of the land. 

In other directions his faculty was commonplace. 
When he became a musical critic the public was 
amused. A friend, walking with him through a picture- 
gallery, was surprised at the judgments he pronounced. 
But when he voiced the right on an}' question touching 
the condition of the downtrodden, the treatment of 
women, or the duty of purit}' and self-control, it was an 
old trumpet of the Lord, or as the roar of the lion of 
the tribe of Judah, that we heard. What a true refrain, 
sublime tautology, or unalterable parallelism in a He- 
brew psalm, his utterance was! ''These chains must 
be rent or taken off, selah ! " was the bm-den and tune 
of resonance from an iron string. 

His irresistible demand was of equal rights for all 
of either sex. But while such characters as his are 
needed and appear, equalit}' of individual constitution 
and influence cannot exist, an}' more than the sea could 
be emptied into a pond, or the Himalayas smoothed to 
the level of Asia, or the lightnings of the sky reduced 
to a spark on the hearth. He was the hydrostatic para- 
dox reduced to actual practice in civil and social aflfairs, 
holding the ocean in check with a drop ; one columnar 
man in the other side of the scale against and resisting 
the drift and subsidence of the race. He was original 



422 POKTRAITS. 

in this ethical weight. He did not owe his preponder- 
ance to an}^ other hero or foreseer, but proclaimed an 
authentic gospel from his own breast. Had he bor- 
rowed, he could not have launched his bolts of fire ! 
The bow of Uljsses could be bent by none of the self- 
ish suitors, and only b}" Ul3^sses himself. 

But Garrison was no less a religious than a moral 
man, a Christian though not a church-goer, a regular 
communicant in a sense as deep as was ever carried hy 
any bread and wine. When that honest and almost 
unequalled preacher, George Putnam, who said "he 
became an abolitionist when the Lord did," remarked 
to Garrison, then his neighbor, that he did not see 
him at meeting, the reply was, "I go to hear m3^self 
preach sometimes ! " That grand duality, by reason of 
which a man is in his own bosom speaker and audience 
too, nobody knew better than he. To such a listener 
and overhearer of God in the mind's temple and court, 
Jesus himself is not lord and master, but friend, — the 
title which, with his first disciples, he craved ; and but 
for such genuine inspnation at first hand, like a fresh 
wind out of the sky, in our own time, Christianity 
preached on whatever other and outward authority 
could not continue to be received. On what those who 
would drill us in forms and creeds construe as its denial 
it depends for its existence in fact ! How could we 

believe in 

" Siloa's brook, 
That flowed fast by the oracles of God/' 

but for those other brooks ' ' that make the meadows 
green" in our daily paths? We rejoice in whoever 
revives our faith that " the Lord reigneth," — as Garri- 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 423 

son, in his perhaps most favorite citation, ever fondl}" de- 
clared, — even as we do that electricit}' is not worn out, 
or the northwest breeze dead, or the sun's lamp spent. 
Astronomers tell us that the luminar}' which makes for 
us the day will at last have consumed its wick, and 
burnt up from the vessels all its oil. But we should not 
credit an}- consumption at the remotest period of the 
moral sense ; and such men as Garrison, by being its 
organs, are mightier than their reputed intellectual 
superiors, constraining the giants of debate, Webster 
and Clay and Calhoun, as well as those of imperial 
will like Jackson, to stsiy their hands, hush their ut- 
terance, and lower their e3'es. After seasons during 
which fair dealing seems to have disappeared from the 
earth, this lustre of righteousness, like a star out of its 
occultation, in such an aspect and figure as that of 
Garrison returns. 

He was not, indeed, the abolisher of slavery by him- 
self alone. The poor negro bo}', to the question in the 
Catechism, put by his teacher, replied, " The Lord made 
me, but Massa Linkum make me free ! " Garrison gave 
to Lincoln the ample award for his word and deed, 
while for the blessed consummation, sharing his own 
meed of honor with the humblest instrument, he would 
have all men, with him, praise the Most High. Well 
did the Church, which, however he forsook its assem- 
blies, folded him alive, also take him dead to her arms, 
saying, " I, through m}^ priesthood, and not 3'ou, m}' 
son, have been the prodigal ; and my aisles siiall ring 
with 3'our praises, although 3'our soul may not ask 
my prayers." 

Garrison was not the only agent ; solitary he could 



424 PORTRAITS. 

never have prevailed. There would have been too much 
of his monotonous strain to be borne ; and his anti- 
constitutional doctrine was an error that might have 
gone to injurious excess but for other influences as 
essential as his to one and the same end. Those who 
recoiled from the terrible phantom of disunion and 
the blood}^ issue of civil war, from the Red Sea that 
stretched out on the way to freedom, have encountered 
much reproach at the hands of such as rushed ahead. 
All respect is due to him who, in the immense move- 
ment, was to the fore and at the van, having touched 
bottom of the truth in this thing. Yet social and na- 
tional sins are diseases too, to be cured by expectant 
medicine or b}^ prudent surgery, not lopped off at a 
stroke of the knife. To stop the iniquity with aboli- 
tion, immediate and unconditional, was a necessary, no 
less than a rio'hteous crv. But in this world no 2:reat 
change can be immediate and unconditional. Those 
who waited, who pondered the problem and sought the 
wisest way, were servants as loyal and as useful as any 
who proceeded in haste to the end desired. How many 
a heart will crj^ out even now. Would to God that the 
object might have been won at less cost than " a drop 
of blood from the sword for ever}" drop of blood from 
the lash " ! in our mart3T-President's phrase. If an 
earlier crisis had destro^^ed the nation for either black 
or white, or for them both, the issue would have been 
made too soon. In the backwardness of thousands 
of excellent men and women was a qualit}' in the sight 
of Him, who is not in a hurry, as fine and pleasing 
as in any cordial and headlong push to deliver the 
wronged, if how to redeem them effectually were in- 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 425 

deed what the hesitants proposed. Dr. Channing, 
who, once in motion, was as much resolved as were 
those who started earlier to go on, has been reviled 
as a temporizer, a time-server, and a coward in the 
cause. But no curse can rest on that pure and no- 
ble name ! It will be more likely to return to the 
ears of those from whose lips it comes. Channing, 
as has been said b}^ one who was an abolitionist from 
the outset, surrendered for his convictions more than 
Garrison ever had to give up ! He was a beloved man 
and a famous minister, drawing crowds when he spoke, 
prosperous in his worldly fortunes, and an idol in the 
desk. When he came out on the antislavery side he was 
avoided, denounced, and looked at askance ; and some 
of his old friends would not speak to him in the street, 
^or a nature sensitive, like his, was not this a price to 
pa}^ which should save him from the charge of venality 
now? 

Slavery was abolished by no man, but b}^ all men, — 
by the Divine behest and by the United States. The 
cars of progress were coupled for that design ; and the 
brakemen at the wheels, as well as the engineers of 
the train, did their part. Slaver}^ was abolished as a 
war-measure and at a stroke of the pen. But the sud- 
den abolition of it, in time of peace and without prep- 
aration, would have been a shock perhaps too severe 
for the social system to bear. The philanthropist who 
looks at the surface, and woukl overthrow at once any 
external ill, would do more harm than good, could he 
instantaneouslj' have his way. The introduction of uni- 
versal woman-suffrage on the moment, like an eruption 
through the ocean-bed, would lift, on the sea of human 



426 PORTRAITS. 

affairs, one of those prodigious and engulfing billows 
which could be weathered by no pilot of the ship 
of State. It will come, if at all, slowly, when it is 
wanted b}' women, and can be adjusted to our civil 
affairs, as a new continent of the globe rises b}^ the 
gentle and normal pressure of the central force ; the 
hoi}' clamor for it, peradventure, hastening the time by 
stirring the political deeps. 

Mr. Garrison had in this reform an interest second 
only to that which was the chief mission of his hfe. 
He made, on one or another branch of it, solemn 
and moving speeches in England and at home. The 
grounds and conclusions of some by whom it is op- 
posed are the grossest affront offered in this age to 
the human conscience and to common-sense. The 
premises must be wrong which lead to such doctrines 
as are still proclaimed. We are told that fear is a 
shame to a man, but not to a woman ; that the virtue 
of chastit}^ is more important in the woman, inasmuch 
as she guards the succession of property and name, 
than in the man ; that to impose the same penalties for 
vice on a man as on a woman would be without the 
same necessity, and a far greater hardship to him than 
to her ; that a breach of chastity must not be visited 
with equal condemnation on a man as on a woman ; that 
different values are to be assigned to the same virtue 
in men and women ; and that a man can retrieve lost 
honor, and a woman cannot. What masculine villain 
could ask greater license for his iniquities than all this ? 
It is carte blanche for transgression in entries of the 
blackest dye. It is magna, charta for all the profligacy 
of the stronger sex that has stained the annals of the 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 42T 

world. What but a worldly- polic}- is the frankly con- 
fessed reason for this double standard and division of 
virtues betwixt the two sides of humanity, in a distri- 
bution which not a sentence from either volume of Holy 
Writ can be quoted to justify ? A spotless womanhood 
in an incorruptible wife must, it is said, secure to 
offspring their legitimate famil^'-title ! Shall the man 
be allowed to have other children of his blood witli 
other names or with none? Is the escutcheon then 
without a blot? Is a cleanly constitution certified, 
as a divine bill of health, for the generation to come, 
when only one of the parents is clean ? Does Christ or 
apostle wink at fornication or adulter}^ in either one of 
them more than in the other? Does not the old com- 
mandment, equally with the new, make honor and holi- 
ness alike binding on him who begets as on her who 
bears? The plea of the wolf that the lamb, drinking 
on the stream below, muddied the water above, is the 
only piece of literature with w^hich to characterize so 
monstrous a view, on which all honest men and women 
should unite in a common oath to have no mercy to 
palliate or forgive. Purit}^, we are informed, is the 
virtue for a woman, and truth for a man. Sorely, in- 
deed, he needs veracity in his business ; but should she 
be less candid in her representations and affairs ? She 
must be above suspicion in her sexual relations ; but is 
it of less consequence that grave mistrust of his goings 
and comings, if his inclination be questionable, should 
dog his steps? All the brethren and sisters that de- 
serve these dear appellations, old as the world, will 
unanimously say. No ! Man and woman, made to- 
gether in that image of God which else would be in 



428 PORTRAITS. 

either incomplete, must be, like him, both holy alike. 
Any opinion by which this judgment is contravened is 
neither intuitive nor inspired. It is a verdict of expe- 
diency, from past cycles of error and sin. Its basis is 
calculation of utility ; and even as such the sum will 
be found incorrect, and never be proved before God 
and the instincts of the human soul. 

In every way Mr. Garrison was of the future, not of 
the past. He was a millennial man ; and a right rela- 
tion between man and woman is a larger project, and 
has its accomplishment farther away, than the eman- 
cipation everj'where of the blacks. We feel that the 
first step of progress has not been taken so long as it is 
denied that moral excellence of an}' sort is not common 
to, or independent of sex ; that to be immaculate is 
more important in our wife, daughter, or sister, than 
in her mate, who can recover with any credit from 
derelictions which her reputation cannot survive, be- 
cause she stands guard over the descent of his ! From 
expediency and a title to earthly goods virtue itself, 
then, is derived. Purity is based on property ; and 
any other virtue on the same utilitarian principle is of 
more or less consequence according to circumstances. 
We had supposed that virtue of ever}^ sort was a dictate 
of conscience, an inspiration of God, and an instinct of 
the soul ; that it was a jewel, and not a bit of paste ; 
that it was not itself, like Nebuchadnezzar's image, a 
composition, but a constitution, according to which all 
other things should be created and composed. Behold, 
it is naught but a pudding-stone of the mind ! Then 
there is no adamant in nature ; the grace of God is a 
mosaic, and his spirit a figure of speech. The elements 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 429 

are our parents, and we have no father beside ; and 
this making all human worth out of selfish calculation 
is supposed to be a panopl}' of argument which no criti- 
cal objection can pierce. Who can find a joint in the 
armor? is the question put; to which we answer. It 
gapes, and is open to the spear at ever}' point ! It was 
said of Achilles that he was vulnerable only in his heel ; 
and nothing but the lower extremities of a man seem to 
be left when he is exempt from anj^ dut}^ which is im- 
posed on a woman, for no reason but because a base 
custom which men have instituted so bids ! The present 
writer was once adjured by a bridegroom not to require 
anv more in the marriasje vows of the bride than of him. 
But to make the Providence that establishes human 
society the author of a requisition so unfair carries pro- 
fanity to the extreme. 

That male puritj* is as momentous, at least, as female, 
is hinted by the old Scripture-proverb that it was the 
eating of sour grapes by the ' ' fathers " that had set the 
children's teeth on edge, and by a modern one concern- 
ing the equal fitness of the same condiment to the mascu- 
line and feminine of a certain species of domesticated 
fowl, whose literal terms are too coarse to cite. No 
Indian squaw or Otaheitan savage would sa}^ that aught 
else is fair. Not to be re-born, but born and begot 
aright, is the sum of all reform. When we have a true 
human generation, all the aid societies and philanthropic 
associations and assemblies for charity may disband and 
dissolve. Therefore let us take a stronger than Father 
Mathew's pledge to stand by, and inaugurate whatso- 
ever will promote that coming of a true human race into 
the world, which any license for either party to the mar- 



430 PORTRAITS. 

riage-eontract will prevent. It is reported hj travellers 
that when Russian husbands take liberties Russian wives 
do the same ; and a spreading libertinism, which may, in 
its corrupting swaj^ among the higher classes, go far to 
account for Nihilism, is the mournful and menacing re- 
sult. When Napoleon the Great was about to lead his 
arm}" into the field, he sometimes swore them to be faith- 
ful to their countr}", to their general, and to their flag ; 
and to each adjuration they answered, " We swear," with 
a murmur that overspread the earth and filled the sk}'. 
Let all who would befriend the tie betwixt woman and 
man join in a like conjuration that, in the mutual engage- 
ment, neither part}' shall be false. Man and woman are 
made together in the image of God. She is half thereof ; 
and without her womanhood it would be a broken image 
in all mankind. Moreover, in this image there is a com- 
mon circulation of virtue through all its parts and forms. 
No beauty of disposition or grace of character, charm 
of temper or courage of will, can be confined to either 
side. Whatsoever is pure and lovely must make in 
human shape the whole circuit of divinity to have its 
true potency, as electricity must traverse the wires to 
and fro before a connection is made and the message 
sped. 

To estimate a virtue by its supposed politico- economi- 
cal consequences is to make all virtue a compromise. 
But are there not some virtues that belong less to a 
woman and more to a man, such as courage and enter- 
prise, as we read that a man once " was famous accord- 
ing as he had lifted up the axe on the thick trees," and 
as he has alwa3"s fought in war? Is not fear "a. 
shame in him and not in woman " ? I answer, for her 



GAKRISON, THE REFORMER. 431 

to be fearless is not to be unsexed. Braver}- in battle 
or against the elements is, however, a half-ph3-sical 
quality. There are primary and secondar}' virtues, as 
there are primar}' and secondar}^ properties of matter. 
But truth, honest}', and purity are to vigor and pluck, 
to contention and resistance, what extension and 
weight are to color and form ; and the moral primaries 
become and adorn either sex alike. To the plea that 
man has the stronger appetite to justify him, the re- 
ply is, that he should feel all the more bound not to 
throw the reins on its neck, and needs to be especially 
restrained and warned ; and that moral obligation should 
not be for him a looser curb, nor apology a thicker pal- 
liation cast over his than his companion's fault. To let 
loose a wayward propensity on principle is worse and 
more dangerous than a system of polygamy, as among 
the Mormons, or than Solomon's concubinage in old 
Jewish times. It would insulate the woman, deprive her 
of any proper mate, and tempt her, as in France, to 
take in such mannei' as she might choose her revenge. 
But the chief evil of a social philosophy, which gives the 
least excuse, or opens to any excess a crack of the door, 
is that it makes virtue an accident or arrangement, not 
a law. There is thus no commandment in life, but all 
is a game ; and the conduct of every individual is at 
the hazard of his inclination as on the cast of a die. 
There would thus be a taint at the source of human 
behavior, a rot in the thread of every relation, and 
many a Cain, whom no Bible could take notice of, a 
vagrant and tramp on the earth. 

The historic sense, so indispensable to a historian, 
becomes tyrannical and false when it puts the eyes in 



432 PORTRAITS. 

the back of the head, and would stereotj'pe the future 
on the pattern of the past. However sage in this 
world's wisdom such a posture may be, it is not the 
attitude of any hero, reformer, martyr, or saint. It is, 
indeed, the look and gesture which make what we call 
conservatism. It is the aspect of despairing and tim- 
orous men, who talk of our institutions as a failure, a 
broken promise, or a forlorn hope. Bright prospect it 
has none. 

Transcendent genius none will claim for Mr. Garri- 
son, 3'et in ideas was his strength. The missiles dis- 
charged in the field can seldom be fired again ; but 
principles are a miraculous ammunition, more mighty 
the oftener it ma}^ be used. Like a boomerang, every 
weapon with which we justl}' assail iniquity returns to 
our hand. Garrison was mistaken for a heated zealot 
when he was a tranquil marksman. He was the granite 
hill, against which the raging elements broke to flow 
down in a fertilizing stream. He was the storm-centre 
rather than the storm. He was the Spartan bearing his 
message, though he fell dead at the goal. He belonged 
as to a Roman or Macedonian phalanx, which pierced 
the hostile arra}^ like an arrow or wedge. So few were 
these soldiers of humanit}^ at first that they had, when 
attacked, to form in hollow square to bear the brunt, 
being so vastly outnumbered by their foes ; and Garri- 
son was as cool as a cannoneer serving his hot and 
smoky gun. Rather, he was an element of hostility to 
wrong, and no more than an element of nature to be 
blamed. As well attempt to dela}^ an earthquake, and 
put off the deluge, as postpone his onset and charge ! 
The rods with which the proslavery folk sought to 



GARRISON, THE REFORMER. 433 

protect their dwelling were melted b}^ the lightning 
_w^hich they would avert. God took the controversy 
up into the whirlwind, as he did the old quarrel with 
Job ! The human issue was a resultant of forces, and 
not the contribution of an}' one man. We are at the 
old Pharisee-business of sepulchre-building now, con- 
cealing our shame that we ti'eated the live prophets so 
ill.' 

Garrison was a believer in both the end and the 
means. Explaining to a young man the use of the 
printing-press, as he handled the lever, he said, "This 
is the mightiest of things, and with it we hope to abol- 
ish slavery in the land." He exposed the trespasser, 
and never hushed the truth. He put his light on a 
table, and not under a bushel. Shall I say he was a 
" starter " of the car of rectitude? Amid what a crowd- 
ing and confusion his keen whistle was alwa3's heard ! 
He was a lonely and a primar}- man. If he calculated 
the value of the Union, he never did that of the lib- 
erty it was formed to defend. Only one of a million 
names is engraved on the tablet of fame too deep to be 
effaced ; and his is the millionth name ! No political 
ultimatum is so final as that call for freedom which in 
a new exodus is more, complete to-da3\ "I never 
knew," said one, "what was meant bj^ Christ's wash- 
ing of his disciples' feet till the fugitive African came 
for me to wash his ! " One genuine spring of human 
love bears refreshment far and wide, as a runnel of 
living water supplies a town ; and Garrison was a foun- 
tain. His advance resembled a marching with ban- 
ners. As a paper that flutters and rustles in the street 
stai'tles a timid horse, so the "Liberator" alarmed 

28 



434 POUTRAITS. 

every traveller on the highways. A rope was around 
his neck in Boston. Where is it now? What a relic it 
would be, like the holy coat of Treves, or the bones of 
martyrs, or a piece of the true cross ! B}' the descend- 
ants of the very men that plied and cast it about his 
neck like a lasso for a wild beast, it would be converted 
now for an ornament and a charm. He wrote on his 
dungeon wall the reason of his incarceration. On earth 
and in heaven he has come out into the light. 

Mr. Garrison was a born independent, an incarnate 
resolution, a man that could go by himself and stand 
alone ; and he was compressed into resisting and resist- 
less power by the right of his cause and the exigency of 
the case. He did not court an}'^ backing, and was indif- 
ferent to applause. He stood apart from his peers in 
his belief in spiritualism and its so-called manifesta- 
tions ; and when I told him that Paul, who never saw 
the Lord save in spiritual vision, was the chief apostle, 
and that Thomas, who wanted to put his fingers into 
the print of the nails, and thrust his hand into the Mas- 
ter's side, was never heard of again, he astonished me 
by repljdng that Thomas was worth all the rest of the 
disciples put together ! When an invitation was sent to 
him to assist in raising the flag at Fort Sumter after 
the war, he received it with not a sign of exultation but 
an impassive face. He was as unmoved by the compli- 
ment or the glory as a frigate by a shining ripple on her 
sides. The exigency had been so great and grave that 
he had lost in it himself. 



HUNT, THE AETIST. 435 



VI. 
HUNT, THE ARTIST. 

ART among us is still a sort of wanderer or lost 
child. But there seems to be occasionalh" born 
in this land of the Puritans one who is not puritanic, 
but rather like the offspring of parents whom some mis- 
chance has exiled from their own native climate and 
soil, ,yet who comes to remind us that there is such a 
thing as beauty- alike in that nature and art which have 
both in New England lain so long under a religious 
curse, and M^hose spirit the theory and practice of our 
modern materialism would again, like the old theolog}^, 
suppress or kill, by making nature the cause in aU crea- 
tion instead of the ever-proceeding effect. 

The artist is a silent preacher to whom those mate- 
rial elements which the scientist explores for their own 
sake, and for the laws they illustrate, have but the 
intrinsic worth of what they express by proportion and 
color of the charm and meaning of this world, being but 
one of the bullets shot from the muzzle of the sun, to 
undergo during the geologic ages such a subduing pro- 
cess that one might sa}- its Author is an artist, with 
Nature in his immense studio for a pupil and help. For 
how the gigantic primeval fauna and flora have been 
refined ! There could have been no rose or lily, more 
than a Socrates or a Jesus, at the start. But among 



436 PORTRAITS. 

the atoms a God is at work, because nature is a handi- 
work of Deity ; and nature and art are thus convertible 
terms. Science falsely assumes in nature a depth, sci- 
entifically reached, below what an}' art can sound. The 
senses and the understanding, the faculties which Sci- 
ence emplo3's, deal onl}^ with the outside of things. 
Meantime, she rehearses in secret with her Author all 
the parts she is to perform. She is for ever veiled. No 
mortal has lifted her curtain, or been admitted to the 
little green-room where for the open stage she lays her 
plots. Thus, while the scientist may regard the artist 
as but the decorator of her scener}^, maker of her cos- 
tume, and provider of the theatrical properties, the 
artist holds that the beauty which plays over her sur- 
face is but an outlet of the essence at her core. Her 
charms are not like trinkets or bracelets, worn on the 
arms and neck, but expressions through the counte- 
nance of uncontainable goodness and immortal grace ; 
and her interpreter is not the ornamenter but the repre- 
sentative of her designs. He brings us into close com- 
munion, nearer to her than does any statement of her 
facts and laws, in which she is but like a tree in winter 
stripped of verdure, or a skeleton without the mobile, 
ruddy, and breathing flesh. Her volume is a picture- 
book, whose text would be dr}^ and in a foreign tongue 
without the illustrations. While there are in the world 
no livelier quarrels than among the scientific and philo- 
sophic schools, and such a materialist as Haeckel flings 
vile epithets at Agassiz and Virchow, to prove that 
he at least has not reached the truth, which is a spirit 
of justice and love, let us therefore be thankful for a 
refuge from the strife of tongues in that pavilion of 
beauty, so many of whose chambers art unlocks. 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 437 

Let me not disparage the benefit of Science. She 
takes us forward as in a foot-journey. Then we get 
into the chariot of Art, to be carried on our endless 
wa}', whicli has so man}^ stations and no goal. I love 
the philosophers, and but smile to see how none of their 
explanations suffice ! I love their disciples of all schools, 
and marvel onl}^ at those who are led captive b}^ any 
one man! "Great is Allah, and Mohammed is his 
prophet," exclaims the Turkish devotee in the Orient. 
" Great is Nature, and Spencer and Darwin are her 
prophets," is the outcry of their votaries in the trans- 
atlantic West. Greater still are Plato, and Aristotle,^ 
and Hegel, and Immanuel Kant, with his morals above 
expediency, and a conscience be3-ond those utilitarian 
calculations which are like a merchant's ledger of profit 
and loss. But the singers, Shakspeare and Homer, 
with the painters, Velasquez and Rembrandt, have a 
stature of equal height. Sa3's that candid master, Dar- 
win, "There is a natural selection by which the fittest 
survive." So, then, there is a will in Nature, beside the 
mighty original push. She seems to have an alterna- 
tive and a choice. Beside the gradual incline of her 
procedure up or down, there are nodes and crises in 
her movement, little leaps and starts, as when the 
mushroom breaks through the crust of the ground, or 
the bourgeon of a plant splits its horn}' bark with pres- 
sure soft as a baby's skin, teaching us how bej^ond all 
hammering a constant gentleness will succeed. 

The artist's business is to copy Nature, and to " bet- 
ter her instruction" in choosing from her what he likes, 
as it is said Turner selected what pleased him, and left 
the rest, being not a Chinese imitator, but a bard with 



438 PORTRAITS. 

the brush, dipping it in his palette instead of a pen in 
ink. He was the English Sliakspeare ; and the canvas 
was his book, the " Slave-Ship" his tragedy of "Mac- 
beth," and the " Building of Carthage" his " Midsum- 
mer Night's Dream." 

Some men and women have their brains packed so 
full of facts or data and laws that there is little room 
left for music or picture or prayer. But understanding 
does not, so well as imagination, even uncler stand the 
world. Our American poet can make an image of the 
" chambered nautilus," but what investigator can de- 
tect the primordial germ behind the first curl of its 
shell? Truth to the intellect is but the shadow of 
beauty, and beauty is the face of truth. There are 
many facts that will not fit the system -maker's theory 
of the world as developed or evolved. But the values 
of form and color are essentially unalterable. The 
line of beauty is one, and it suits the soul. There- 
fore it is written that " out of Zion, the perfection of 
beauty, God hath shined." 

William Morris Hunt, like Horatio Greenough, was 
a born artist ; and, when a boy, began to- make pic- 
tures on the margins of the leaves of books, and to 
model figures, as Greenough did, in whatever fit mate- 
rial came to hand, — the promise of the sculptor in him 
being at first most marked. Whence and wherefore in 
any one is such irrepressible disposition to reproduce, 
but as part of the image and inclining of Him who does 
not analyze and dissect, but for ever puts things to- 
gether, and himself moulds and paints the world? 
Surely he has no finer work than in the artist he fash- 
ions and sends ; and seldom is seen a rarer pattern of 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 439 

flesh than the one of whom I speak. Such and so 
faultless were his form, face, eye, poise, gesture, and 
shape of the hand, which was the unconscious attend- 
ant of a melodious and eloquent voice, that in an}' com- 
pany he would be at once singled out by an observer. 
There is a fine portrait of him as a young man with 
brown hair and tawny beard, which, in later years long, 
waving, and soft as silk, made part of the picture he 
was as he w^alked the street. His disposition was so 
genial and benign, as well as communicative of original 
imaginations and thoughts, that there was no more popu- 
lar member in the class in his college-da3^s. A singular 
delicac}' informed his nervous sj'stem and whole frame, 
which had much of the woman in it, as has been the 
case with man}' eminent men. Quick to see and to stir, 
curious to gaze at and spell out this panorama of things 
and persons which the never-resting creation is, he 
could scarce have been made a philologist, a metaph}'- 
sician, or a student of antiquarian lore. Wonderful in 
his descriptions of what he observed, and instructive 
in conversation, he had sailed, and was always sailing, 
round the world in a different wa}^ from Captain Cook, 
and got all his rich learning not from literature but 
from life. He was not oiil}^ a poet on canvas, as he 
might have been on the page, but a Chrj'sostom, or 
talker with the golden mouth. The fine and sensitive 
thread with which his mortal garment was sewed to- 
gether, while it qualified him for his calling, was also, 
as it must be in any man, his exposure to pain. Dis- 
cord is greatest and most extreme on the strings or in 
the pipes of the musical instrument that is most com- 
plex and perfect, and it is only ' ' sweet bells " that can 



440 . PORTRAITS. 

be "jangled out of tune." If he suffered on account 
of a constitution exceptionall}^ tender to respond to a 
breatli and quiver at a touch, he but shared the lot of 
all with like organism, as George Sand says the com- 
poser Chopin was wounded by a fold in a rose-leaf and 
would tremble at a shadow that passed. 

It is a question alwa3's how to fix smj one artist's 
place among others of his own country or time. The 
general verdict is likel}^ to be that, while Allston and 
Stuart and Copley may have excelled Hunt as colorists 
and painters of single figures, as Allston soared above 
all his fellows in this land into the heaven of inven- 
tion, religious sentiment, and a divine calm, so that his 
pictures show at once what the man loved and where 
he delighted to abide, yet that Hunt has greater variety, 
and measures a wider breadth of both nature and hu- 
manity in his st3'le. Certainly he belongs to the school 
which is both modern and French ; and he was succes- 
sivel3^_^in one and another part of the school-room, first 
with the more classic and ideal Couture, afterwards 
with Millet, at once so romantic and humane. 

They are gone. How the painters of late have died ; 
and France in her Millet, Corot, and Couture has lost 
more precious possessions than in her beloved Alsace and 
Lorraine ! Hunt, too, has departed to the majorit}', and 
rejoined his peers, leaving his earthl}- comrades and schol- 
ars to mourn. What is his place in the earthly ranks? 
If a man by an unerring law goes into, and ma}' be dis- 
covered b}' his work, be it with the chisel or brush or pen, 
how well we must think of Hunt ! Not a coarse con- 
ception or indecent stroke does aught that ever stood 
on his easel present ; and if an}" inquire what manner 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 441 

of person this was, all that he produced, Tvathout a con- 
tradictor}' vote, answers that goodness and purity, mod- 
esty and humilit}', truth and sincerity, dwelt in his soul- 
Did he not indeed husband his powers, economize his 
opportunities, guard with temperance his strength, and 
improve his time? Were there an}', the faintest, testi- 
mon}' to the contrar}', it would be from a false witness ; 
for what he has done, so great, various, and manifold 
in quantit}' and quality too, comes in proof, which no 
trivial evidence could rebut, what a hard-working and 
devoted man he was, getting out of himself for his 
fellow-creatures' behoof all the music in him that his 
Creator designed. If he stopped b}' the wayside, it 
was but for a moment's play ; if he plucked a flower, 
it was while he was tilling the ground ; if he slept, 
it was beside that ' ' popp}' which grows among the 
corn." His drummer-bo}' drummed him to his task ; 
his stone-cutter, lifting his hand to his brow to wipe 
awa}' the sweat, was the painter himself at sorer toil 
than with any iron pick. Doubtless the " Boy with the 
Violin" was in literal veritj'the master in art also, in his 
leisure hours ; and the ' ' Hurd3'-Gurdy " was not only 
from, but had been in, his hand ! Had he not laughed 
and sported sometimes, he could not have labored as 
he did, and been the most prolific of all in his vocation 
who have lived in our midst. So, in the solemn phrase 
of our funeral service, let " his works follow him," and 
he will have a noble fame on earth and the jo}' of his 
Lord in heaven. 

In my incompetence of judgment I must leave his 
professional merit to the verdict of experts, although I 
have often noticed how much unfairness and animosity 



442 PORTRAITS. 

in his decisions an art-critic for the press may display. 
" William," said one who knew him best, " had a deli- 
cacy of sentiment which even among women is found in 
but one of a thousand ; " and how his refinement ap- 
pears in his sketches, in color or charcoal, of the New 
£ng:land meadows, or of the Florida woods and creeks ! 
Pond and pasture., river and harbor, sea and shore, — 
against which the Atlantic crowds in storm or laps 
softly in calm, — what better than Egyptian embalming 
they all get from his hand! How lively and fresh, as 
he touches it, is every scene! Said John Weiss, "I 
did not see the picture in nature, as we walked together, 
till it was shown by him." From the port of Glouces- 
ter to the Falls of Niagara his pencil goes with the 
same power and ease. What boy that ever drove 
home the cows over the hill but will thrill with a mem- 
ory, perhaps fifty years old, in looking at a certain one 
of his pastels ! Landscape, portrait, and allegor}', he 
is at home for them all. If before some girlish like- 
ness, or scene on the Charles River, from his pencil, 
we are tempted to say he is distinguished by a hand- 
ling delicate and nice, let us look at the rush of the 
water in the rapids above Goat Island, or at the incar- 
nation of law in Chief Justice Shaw ! 

Mr. Hunt caught by instant sympathy the manner 
of his own first or last teacher. How large and ready 
was his appropriation and assimilation of ever}'^ qualit}^, 
no grandeur or subtile trick of the business being hid 
from his infallible glance ! But he worked through all 
masters to himself, and exhibited at the close an indi- 
vidualit}^ as pronounced as theirs, to become a master 
himself. Never were the pupils of any other man a 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 443 

more docile and enthusiastic band. He enkindled them, 
while he taught, as Agassiz did his scientific class. 
He reserved his own supreme admiration for Michael 
Angelo ; and well I remember, at m}^ table, when Mr. 
Coquerel, of Paris, made some critical exception, which 
was not to Mr. Hunt's taste, how he trembled and grew 
white in his seat with artistic wrath, as he declared 
respecting Angelo's figure of Eve, that he " never 
could understand how that man could have created 
the woman from whom he had himself descended ! " 
Aspiration and ascension, as well as keen inspection, 
w^ere habitually Mr. Hunt's mental state. He said, " I 
am going to treat that subject better than it was ever 
handled before, — I know I shall not, but I believe I 
shall." So Rubinstein said, "I tell m^' pupils, if they 
do not expect to excel Beethoven the}' must not compose 
at all." " In every trial the painter makes," said Mr. 
Hunt, " there comes a moment of despair ; " and " the 
artist's affair is to get out of the worst scrapes on his 
canvas a man ever got into." He affirmed that his en- 
deavor was to set forth '^ what no man ever saw, — the 
soul." He loved what was alive and beaming more 
than he did an}' deca}', however picturesque. Hear- 
ing Titiens sing, he said, '^The rest of us are raisins, 
but she is a grape." His favor was impartial for all 
that is fair. When one was reported as liking a willow, 
but not an oak-tree, he replied, "One that professes to^ 
like an oak and not a willow does not like the oak, but 
is onl}' bullied by it." He was such a discerner and 
active explorer of nature that, if he were found with a 
book reading b}' the fire, it was known something was 
the matter with him, and that he must feel unwell ; and 



444 PORTRAITS. 

during actual illness, his journey being postponed, he 
showed still the matchless cunning of his fingers as he 
wrote on a bit of paper characters so minute that only 
with a microscope could they be read. 

Charlotte Cushman said of players, and painters too, 
that " the moral point is not what takes their e3'e." 
But he had a strong sense of what is jast in behavior 
as well as in art, and said he would not send his pic- 
tures to a particular exhibition which was ungenerously 
managed ; he " would rather let the flies sit upon them ! " 
When a lady informed him one morning, ' ' I shall not 
keep my appointment to sit, I am too yellow to-day," 
he observed, "The question is not whether she is yel- 
low, but whether I am ! " He meant it should be con- 
sidered by the sitter whether the artist might be in the 
mood to paint ; and he thought that egoism in the 
lad}^ had prevailed rather than equit}', or altruism^ as it 
would be called in the philosophy of our time. He 
satirized all straining for effect by sa3ing, ' ' A man can- 
not be smarter than he is ! " 

No shrinking maiden had, more than Mr. Hunt, that 
sensibility which is crossed by deformity, as it is pleased 
with all that is harmonious, while yet no man was ever 
braver to bear the anguish he incurred by an}^ jar or 
dissonance, in the silence of his own breast. He never 
complained of disappointment or of unkindly treat- 
ment, in his vocation or otherwise, to the outside world. 
Scarcely a lisp concerning his share in the common 
troubles of mortal life reached the ears even of .his 
intimate friends. He behaved like the Spartan youth 
who concealed under his cloak the fox that tore at his 
breast. With the humor that is proper to aU genius he 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 445 

would set out actions and characters with the liveliest 
hues, in his speech as with his brush, using perhaps 
extravagant expletives, or, when soreh' tempted, as in- 
nocently' as Sterne's Uncle Tob}", a round oath ; but of 
malignit}', or desire to give pain to another, his gentle 
bosom held not a jot. He would give by turns a piece 
of his heart or mind, but there was no poison in his 
disposition. 

The talk about the artistic temperament ma}" refer 
to what is aside from ph3'siological truth. Artists are 
of all sorts, sanguine, bilious, and nervous. Some have 
the French and Italian mobility, and others the Dutch 
phlegm. Genius includes the reserved Englishman and 
the stalwart Norwegian in its class. Yet something 
peculiarl}' tender and impressionable must be in the 
imagination of all artists alike. The}' are children, not 
adults. The}' live in the present. They have no past 
tense. Like a photographic plate, they catch an object. 
Like a turtle from the brook, or a gay summer insect, 
they love and take to the sun, and bask or move in it as 
theii' element with more than the pleasure of common 
men. Their intellectual instruments have, if not a 
frailer construction, yet a more polished edge, like the 
tools that must be wiped from moisture of a breath 
before they are laid away, or the lenses that have to 
be adjusted, and the metres we hang carefully up. 
In consideration of their precious benefactions they 
should have some liberal indulgence of their tastes 
and allowance of their atmosphere ; even if, as one 
hints, to prevent interruption by such as do not under- 
stand, the}' write "Whim" over their door. There is 
domestic and social evidence that even such colossal 



446 PORTRAITS. 

men as Milton, Dante, and Goethe possessed their 
characteristic faculty on condition of an extraordinary 
susceptibility, which was not alwa3^s under their own 
control, so that getting along with them may have 
sometimes been no easy task. The side of the gifted 
mortal which worshippers see in his splendid displa^^s 
and lucid intervals of power, he may not keep upper- 
most alwa^^s in debate or habitually at home. The 
wife of a famous preacher of a former generation is 
said to have remarked somewhat bitterly on the dif- 
ference of her husband to his admiring congregation 
and privately to herself ! It is a law of nature that 
the highest tide should be followed by the lowest ; and 
there is a refluence unavoidable in whatever mind in 
its occasional efforts ma}^ transcend the ordinary mortal 
capacity or lot, although there cannot for genius be any 
abrogation of the moral law. But, as we glory in its 
rising, let us be, patient if the flats appear when it sub- 
sides ! The rare variet}^ it constitutes of our common 
humanity should be entreated gently. Let us handle it, 
to change the figure, like a quadrant or a mirror, and 
not toss it into a corner like a rusty shovel or hoe ! 

But few of the inspired ones less need any apology 
than Mr. Hunt. The present witness knows too well 
how generously lavish of his attention and time he was, 
even for those who had little claim ; how he would run 
with his smiling face and mellow voice to one that stood 
and knocked at his studio-door ; with what long-sufler- 
ing he bore intrusion on his work, and in what a heaping 
measure or an outpouring flood he gave counsel to those 
in need. Yet he did not, more than others, relish being 
bluntly controverted. To oppose him was like thwart- 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 447 

ing a child. He was a fountain, and it was best to let 
him flow ! Else he would be choked or confused, and 
one would incontinentl}' miss the riches on the stream 
of a monologue like that of Coleridge, on themes as- 
suredly' not the same. 

Genius is a name for transcendent ability constitution- 
all}' or providentiall}' determined to a particular line ; 
and it was plain that Mr. Hunt might have been a mu- 
sician, or an actor, or in an}' profession an eloquent 
speaker, had such direction been laid out for him by cir- 
cumstances. He was a poet, with pigments for his vocab- 
ulary of words. He could tell a story equally well with 
the crayon or the tongue. He could admirably drama- 
tize, either as a vivid narrator or as a portrayer in 
dumb figures of the living scene for which he cared. 
His " Prodigal Son," though not literally faithful to the 
particulars of the Scripture tale, affects us as that does. 
His "Jewess" is as good as Scott's Rebecca, or as 
that earlier one that stood by the well. He was at 
heart a Proven9al singer, a wandering minstrel or trou- 
badour, or he could not have drawn the shapes that 
hint theni so to the life. He had in him something of 
Don Quixote or Miss Bronte's Paul Emanuel. But the 
spirit of rest, no less than of roving, was his ; other- 
wise he could not have brought back, in such peace 
from his journeys, "The Mill-Pond at North Easton," 
or the slow current and slender bayous of the river 
St. Johns ; and he must have known every outward or 
inward meaning of a cloud who drew the brooding of 
the tempest on Cape Ann. 

The last was the most fruitful and in part one of the 
happiest years of Mr. Hunt's art-life. Apparently in 



448 PORTRAITS. 

perfect health, and with great joy, Niagara had from 
him, in several large pictures, justice such as the cataract 
never received before ! Then came the most important 
of all his commissions, which but for the persuasions 
of one very near to him he would have declined. It 
was to decorate with allegorical situations the Albany 
State House walls. Once resolved, however, he entered 
on an enterprise so serious with peculiar zeal. That he 
proved his adequac}^ for a sort of undertaking to which 
he was so unaccustomed is a signal demonstration how 
superior he was alike in exiecution and in inventive design. 
If others in his line among us have been as eminent as 
he in portraiture or in sketches from nature, or have 
evinced more conspicuously any special excellence as 
distinguished from his, no American artist can vie with 
him in mural adornment on so large a scale, while 
his performance in every wa}^ entitled him to scout, as 
he often did, the notion that the age of painting has 
gone, and that art for the future in any of its branches 
is to be contemplated as in a gradual decay. He was 
lo3'al to the ancients ; but he held stoutly that the mod- 
erns had appointments and topics of equal moment of 
their own, and were not to be arrested or put out of 
countenance by the oldest and grandest works. 

Yet how he honored the elders, and sat at their feet, 
and believed in their spiritual descent and ascent, and 
traced their intellectual kith and kin ! Titian in heaven, 
he thought, might say to Allston, " You had something 
gf what I had ; " and Allston would answer, " But you 
had so much, basketsful and basketsful ; " and Titian 
would reply, ' ' Yet 3'ou did so much with what you 
had ! " Hunt's own best touch is not always on his 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 449 

canvas of largest size. He knew that great work, in 
order that any result may be great, can and must go 
into the space of inches and hair-breadths, 3'et also that 
it lies not in hair-lines that are to be made visible with 
a lens, but in the concentration of the artist's intent. 

Though Mr. Hunt had a specialt}', he was not a 
specialist in his talent, but a great intelligence applied 
to art. He understood the pictorial distances, but also 
the social perspective as well. Having listened to a 
paper which almost deified a person recently deceased, 
he remarked on the bad taste of flattering a man " who 
was just dead and might be behind the door ! " When 
a severe judgment had been pronounced, he said, "There 
is room in this world for sinners as well as saints." 

Declining to make a positive engagement, he excused 
himself with the plea, "I lie so, in such cases, when I 
say I will come ! " There was in his frankness an in- 
nate lowly reserve, which no praise or fame could over- 
come. His S3'mpathy was narrowed to no class, but 
ready for the humblest and as wide as the world. He 
was fond of just appreciation, and indignant at captious 
and ignorant criticism; and when one said, "What a 
pit}' it is he could not have received alive the ample 
meed of present approval for what he did ! " one of his 
pupils answered that ' ' he knew it the minute he was 
dead." Indeed, the applause of his last work at Niag- 
ara and Albany seemed to be filling the cup which was 
to run over, not only from his achievement, but in his 
firm and happ}' health. After that came the fatal ebb, 
in which day b}' day his strength and joy ran out. He 
had proposed to refuse for the time all further commis- 
sions, and when summer came, to go to Europe for 

29 



450 PORTKAITS. 

recreation and rest. But he was drawn into new labors, 
which his ardor and good-nature tempted him to as- 
sume ; and erelong the consequences appeared in a 
nervous prostration such as he had never felt before. 
Vital virtue had gone and was swiftly going out of 
him. Vacillation of purpose in such a toiler was a sure 
sj'mptom of constitutional decline. Unnaturally keen 
apprehension of what he might be liable to, as of poi- 
son in the wall-paper and the -colored rug, or of dust 
down the chimney and through the cracks of the floor, 
to increase the difficulty of his breathing, indicated a 
weakening in his thought, which had usually been as 
robust as it was fine. He gained flesh for a while, and 
lost power. The difference of temperature depressed 
him when he came from the ' ' Isles of Shoals " to the 
main-land, even for an hour. His friends offered to 
take him to the mountains for a fortnight to recruit ,• 
and he quietly asked them, ^' And then, after that?" 
One day, as a black cloud with sheets of driving rain 
had overspread the island where he was, he had dis- 
appeared. It had been well known b}^ those nearest to 
him that inability to work and discouraging failure of 
his wonted vigor, when he made any attempt, had been 
the drop most bitter to his taste. What takes place 
psychologically in such a case in the " article of death," 
who shall sa}^ ? The flame burns low in the lamp of 
life, the wick is crusted, only a little blue jet of fire is 
left, which clings obstinately and long, when by the 
smallest agitation of the air — is it a puff of wind or 
the man's own breath? — it is in a moment quenched. 
The increments of inward disorder are too fine for the 
medical eye. Of the sufferer's interior condition in this 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 451 

case none but such as have felt, like the present writer, 
the utter nervous misery can be entitled to speak ; and 
they will speak with tenderness, a word of blame being 
impossible from their lips, knowing as thej' do that any 
pro\ddential or divinely permitted escape, when the 
flesh is a slow and hopeless conflagration of pain, is 
like rescue from a burning house or the instinctive 
shrinking from a cauterizing surgical tool. God takes 
the responsibility for every step of what is indeed ab- 
normal or insane. Let man abstain in it from censure 
of his fellow-man. The lake is readily ruflHed by reason 
of the very quality that makes it the spotless mirror of 
the sky. If we are made up of sentiment, how quick we 
are to resent ! The artist-nature is qualified and in part 
constituted by a sensitiveness that is extreme. 

Mr. Hunt would not be called a man of religious 
sensibility by such as identify piety with an observ- 
ance of stated forms. Neither would John Milton be 
so characterized in his absence from public worship 
in the later 3'ears of his life. But as trul}' reverent 
as that sublime poet was our artist, although his wor- 
ship arose like the incense from ancient altars on the 
open plain. The blaze was too pure to make any 
smoke. Yet the consecrated walls and sweet divisions 
of holy time might well have been for him a help and a 
guard ! But he was in every thing sh}'. He would 
fain hide especiallj' his pangs, and show his best. He 
had a noble shame, which would not suffer him to ob- 
trude what was sad in his condition on those about him. 
Therefore, as he appeared to them in health better than 
he was, they with the whole community were shocked 
at his so sudden decease. But his vital interior had 



452 PORTHAITS. 

already been consumed, and he was ready to crumble 
while outwardly he stood so brave and fair. Never 
surely was metal more fine than in that golden bowl 
broken and silver cord loosed ! 

Mr. Hunt is more in the portraits he drew of others 
than in those he painted of himself, as Shakspeare is 
more in the pla3^s than in the sonnets that bear his 
name. He is indigenous in most of the products of his 
brush, and at the last peculiarly an American in art, 
however his earlier manner was French. He was a 
lover of nature and of human nature, and while making 
the outline of Judge Shaw he said he ' ' wanted to hug 
the man." We feel that many of his individual or ideal 
portraits could walk out of their frames, pass througl; 
our streets, and wander over the world. The artist is 
in the- generous scope, vivacious familiaritj^, self-obliv- 
ious disinterestedness of his work, so real and ideal at 
once that we know we have him in what he does, and 
while admiring the performance cannot help but love 
and honor the man. For how he loved and respected 
the business he was at, vf ith a depth of devoted interest 
that issued in and was perpetual work ! His ' ' Trum- 
peter," that stirred beyond any live one's prowess the 
nation to the field, also blew him on. The singers, the 
lambs, the kittens, the kids, hens, or sheep, they were 
his own being for the time and his very soul. He en- 
tered into them every jot. 

Mr. Hunt never fails of meaning and unity in his pic- 
ture or sketch, and can fill with his central point of inter- 
est the whole space of his work, as, in his " Spring Chick- 
.ens," the sky seems to spread and the river to roll for the 
little brood to which a child scatters crumbs on the green 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 453 

bank. Nature is never without humanitj^ in what he con- 
ceives, and the smallest creature wins his deft hand and 
tender eye. How jealous, therefore, he was of the dignity 
of his calling ! If tliere was aught better here below 
than to paint, he knew it not ! If one had to be per- 
suaded to sit, he said he " would not paint a cat if it 
had objections, theological, superstitious, or any other, 
to being taken." He offered to his subject his heart, 
and did not want any shamefacedness or by-play, but 
affection deep and serious as his own. Of the selfish- 
ness which he said "shortens life to a point," he had 
not a jot. We shall see him as long as cloth and 
panel can hold the light and shade he disposed and 
the pigments he used. Those were his features ! All 
that belonged to his mortalit}^ he spent on his task. 
His palette was the rainbow he dipped his brush into, 
till the nervous touch was worn out that had waited so 
long and faithfully on his imaginative mind. On his 
stints he lavished himself. His life-blood was in the 
tint and splendid staining of those Albany State House 
walls, and the}' are his winsome relics. His remains 
lie outspread in those magnificent forms, surpassing all 
in the same kind which this Western continent has to 
show. There is his court, his reception-chamber, and 
his tomb. He lies buried under the dome he adorned, 
while far away in his native village rest his tired bones. 
His country will cherish tenderly the recollection of such 
unpretending yet religious consecration of unmatched 
powers dedicated even unto death. For into his achieve- 
ment for our delectation all that in this world was in him 
passed. Figure of "Fortune " at the helm did he draw? 
What fortune did the draughtsman have ? We think of 



454 POKTKAITS. 

how many a fortune, besides, which seemed misfortune in 
the history of the genius that glorifies our race, of blind 
Milton and deaf Beethoven, and with which, in the 
diverse measure of the men, what was sad in his story 
may be compared ! Under that civil ceiling on the 
banks of the Hudson, bent and reaching, like Michael 
Angelo at his awful Sibyls, did he give in superhuman 
size ttie cheerful figure of ' ' Hope " ? Into it went all 
the hope of his own throbbing, suffering, but never- 
complaining breast ! The susceptibility which is the con- 
dition and constitution of genius makes it " a pilgrim 
and sojourner on the earth." It is allowed mercifully 
at last to leave the carnal lodgings it finds so poor. 
To other and better accommodations does it not go? 
Did it not shiver like a new-born babe when it came ? 
The ' ' Flight of Night " is conspicuous among those 
mural tablets in paint from the hand of Mr. Hunt. But 
the night he indicated had begun to settle on his own 
brain. Yet he sketched truly ; for him, likewise, it has 
flown ! There is a charcoal sketch by Mr. Hunt of a 
church in the evening dusk, with a crescent moon going 
down in the sky. Underneath are his initials and these 
lines, expressing, doubtless, his feeling, whether from 
another's pencil or his own, — 

"Beyond a Spire the Moon; 
Beyond the Moon a Star ; 
Beyond the Star, what 1 
Eternity." 

When I condoled with a noble man on a great be- 
reavement, he said, "It is no aflaiction ; immortality 
is the fact that swallows up all ! " We know neither our 
friends nor our mercies till they are gone ! One said 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 455 

of Mr. Hunt, " Some persons seem to think a great 
deal more of him since he was dead." Pictures of his 
that might have been bought for hundreds of dollars a 
3'ear ago bring, under the hammer, as man}' thousands 
now. "He can paint no more," the purchasers say. 
How long, indeed, has been the waiting for full appre- 
ciation of the man and the work ! 

The artist is a fellow-pupil with the moralist, going to 
Nature to school. As she has an aim vast, minute, 
immediate, and remote, as she pursues that aim by 
means the most simple and fit, and as in her impenetra- 
ble interior, which none can enter, she lays her plans, 
having as much as any saint a closet of her own, so in 
morals or the art of duty, and in art which clothes in 
beaut}' the moral laws, there is an object, a method, and 
a sphere in common, although the direction and visi- 
ble outcome be not the same. Nevertheless, that is 
righteous which the pencil makes winsome, and ethics 
become beauty incarnate as we incline to obe}- the beau- 
tiful eternal laws. 

Genius is thought, like the child of Melchisedec, to 
come straight from heaven without human descent. 
But by the law of heredity there seems to be an an- 
cestral deposit of poetr}', law, medicine, and divinity 
in certain brains, as former skill is laid up in the head 
of a bee. A great gift of imagination in any one, when 
traced, proves often to be but an old fire, that slumbered 
for a while in a generation or. two, breaking out into 
flame again. But Mr. Hunt inherited directly from one 
parent, at least, his taste and practical tendency for 
art ; and so the new philosophy of experience and evo- 
lution appears to be vindicated in his case. 



456 PORTRAITS. 

As an artist makes a memory sketch, or as one hunts 
about his house to find something which he has left or 
lost, so I have tried to draw the lines of mj- subject from 
mj' recollections and reflections as they came and com- 
bined in such order as the}' pleased, with poor resem- 
blance or half and halting imitation of the method of 
that living subject himself, who mingled, painstaking 
method with inspiration while he mixed his paints. My 
theme at least has been a worthy one. The love of 
beaut}' is part of piety, unless the beaut}^ of holiness be 
a mistaken Scripture-phrase ; and what a perpetual sol- 
ace is the beauty of the world ! There is in it sin, sor- 
row, disappointment, death, so much that the old Persian 
theology gave it over to the Destroyer as well as the 
Preserver with an equally divided claim. But there is 
no deformity in its frame. " He hath made every thing 
beautiful in its time." The comfort of the charm of 
nature is second only to that of the H0I3' Ghost, and he 
who sees and shows and reproduces this beauty is an 
ordained and anointed minister as much as any who 
pronounce the clerical vows. The spirit is the same, 
although we must not confound the spheres. If some 
make art their religion, others make their religion an 
art ; but both religion and art are one in the worship of 
that Being who is the all true and good and fair. Never 
was votar}' in his own profession more zealous or sincere 
than Hunt. Many will miss his speech more than we 
do the brush that has left its splendor behind ; while the 
humor that smiled, wit that sparkled, pathos that melted, 
imagination that blazed and lit up every subject, have 
their words preserved only in the little safes of individ- 
ual recollection, to be quoted as his image comes into 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 457 

man}' a private talk. I remember his condensing the 
worth of freedom into an apothegm, — "You cannot 
work with your elbow bound." He was a child, declar- 
ing " there are lots of fun on earth, also in heaven, 
which we are sure to have." Some of us one evenins: 
shivered at his description of the death of an acrobat in 
France, falling from his loft}' trapeze to the ground, all 
the spectators rising without noise in the solemn hush 
to go out. He was one of the men of genius of our 
countr}' and time, whom it takes so few of our fingers 
to count, and whose orb we should not let vanish and 
make no sign. He sought not high society ; an}' com- 
pany of his fellow-creatures was good enough for him, 
and none, he declared, from which he could not learn. 
He was genial, gentle, generous, outspoken, as well as 
kind ; it being very difficult for him to be reserved. The 
sight of suffering he could not bear, but ran to relieve. 
*' Take the sick girl," he said, " out of the dark side of 
the house, and put her into a sunny room." Of another, 
who was weak, he said to the employers, " You know 
not how a heavy weight feels to her." He would run to 
hush a baby, or carry in his lap a barking, dangerous 
dog in the car. Meeting a music-grinder out of town, 
he changes hats and jackets with him, takes his organ, 
goes to the door of the house near by, plays the tunes, 
pulls off his hat when the people come, is recognized, 
and gets six or seven dollars for the poor Italian. He 
was not — better had he been — a church-goer, but went 
to a hturgical service once, and said he had to look at the 
gowns and bonnets of the congregation, as he took in 
the sermon with the millionth part of his mind ! Almost 
everybody loved him. The last fit use of his unoccu- 



458 PORTRAITS. 

pied studio at Magnolia was to receive the dead body 
of a 3"0ung woman swept awa}' and drowned close by, 
as he was to take his last gasp b}' a shallow reservoir. 
His personal friends and the members of his class were 
all ardently such, and would prompt a better tribute than 
I can render here. 

His mind was indeed good ground, and brought forth 
abundantly to the honor of the great Landlord who put 
it to him in rent ; but the soil was exhausted how sadly 
and too soon ! Alexandre Dumas says Michael Angelo 
is the only man to whom God gave four souls, meaning, 
I suppose, painting, sculpture, architecture, and poetr}'. 
We can claim but one of these for Mr. Hunt, although 
he could model skilfully in clay, and, like that grand mas- 
ter who was his own deUght and pattern, compose in 
verse irhe would. This man, with such gifts from the 
Great Giver, has gone. Before his intellect was dimmed 
of one ray of its brightness, he has faded from view ; 
and, as a cold shadow unexpectedly falls upon us as we 
walk when a cloud blots the sun in mid-heaven, this 
sad occultation chills a thousand hearts. The unerr- 
ing hand has lost its cunning, the musical tongue its 
matchless aptness to persuade, the e^'e is closed which 
naught worth seeing could escape, the manner and 
gesture of a grace and originality peculiarly their 
own are dust, or glorified and transformed. This Ori- 
ental in the West has had his Occident ; this Arab, 
lithe and supple, with nerves of lightning and fibre of 
steel, so swift, so strong, has disappeared among the 
desert sands. In company' he had kept up wonderfully, 
and seemed in good spirits, though so weak. When 
one, to whom his health was a precious care, entertained 



HUNT, THE ARTIST. 459 

him with some piquant and merry tales, he cried out : " I 
never heard so man}' wicked stories before in m}^ hfe, 
and I should think you would not like to be alone with 
your Maker. The air," he added, "is full of wicked- 
ness," and he took a tumbler, which he turned over on 
the table, and affected to fill with air, saving, " If I 
should take a lucifer match this would burn like fire and 
brimstone." In the last exquisite photograph taken of 
him he looks like a macerated monk or pillar-saint, his 
skin drawn like parchment over the hollows of his cheek- 
bones. What caused such an end? Not any particular 
trouble, among his many griefs, but the misery of a ner- 
vous sj'stem hindering sleep and forbidding work, — work 
which was his calling, consolation, home, and refuge 
from every ill. When that failed the last string cracked 
in that marvellous harp some angel plaj-ed in his breast. 
It was death to him to have to stop in his designs. 
When hope died he died. When we cease we decease. 
Had aught been said against him, d3ing was his only 
reply ; and death gives an enormous advantage to a man. 
Nothing strikes like a dead hand or reproves like for ever 
silent lips ; but with what comfort we remember any 
effort or sacrifice for the departed ! We give life when 
we give happiness, and we take it away when we di- 
minish jo}'. The real diggers of graves and hewers of 
monuments are not the workers in marble 3'onder or the 
sextons with their spades. God grant us grace while 
we live, and when we die, to heal and forgive ! For the 
lamented man or those who in any relation with him 
mourn his loss, what room in our bosom for an}' senti- 
ment but pity, compassion, sympathy, commiseration, 
commendation to God ahke of the surviving here and of 



460 PORTRAITS. 

those there who live bej'ond us all, having, in the beau- 
tiful untranslatable French word, trespassed on immor- 
tality while the flesh fences us in. Who can lift a 
horoscope over a coffin? Yet Hope, which Paul writes 
is one of the three abiding things, stands with her 
visions beyond the last eclipse. 



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